


Portal Novelization

by wreckingduty



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Literature, Sci-Fi, fan fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 02:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 64,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckingduty/pseuds/wreckingduty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A novelization of the video game Portal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chamber 00

**Author's Note:**

> This is the rough draft of the first chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The woman awoke to the sound of cheerful music playing.  She opened her eyes and found herself staring at a grey ceiling with a single industrious hanging lamp.

There was a clash and a swish as the clear plastic top to the domed bed that she was lying in opened up.  She sat up and swung her legs over to what was her left and sat on the edge of the bed, trying to collect her thoughts.

She glanced around the room she was in, which was actually a room within a room.  She was in a bare-bones small glass enclosure that contained the bed she was sitting on, a toilet, and a small table that held a coffee cup, a clipboard, and the radio that kept playing the same short song over and over again.  

The most notable feature to this chamber was that there were no seeable doors.  There was one section of wall that was not glass, but rather it was a dark grey material with two metal lines that had pale blue lights.  Above this piece of wall was a counter that was rapidly counting down.

Just as she was beginning to wonder what the timer was timing, a cordial female voice filled the air.  The voice came from no seeable speakers and it was impossible to tell where it was coming from.

"Hello and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment center.  We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one.  Your specimen has been processed and we are now ready to begin the test proper.

Before we start, however, keep in mind that although fun and learning are the primary goals of all enrichment center activities, serious injuries may occur.

For your own safety and the safety of others, please refrain..."  The voice suddenly cut out and there was an electronic short out with a buzzing noise and sparks flying.  The voice continued speaking, however this time it was rapid, high pitched, and in Spanish.  "Por favor bordón de fallar Muchos gracias de fallar gracias."  Chell wasn't familiar with Spanish and it was spoken quickly, so it didn't make any sense to her.

As quickly as things had malfunctioned it returned to normal.  The pleasant voice continued, "Stand back.  The portal will open in three, two, one."  

With a quiet swish, starting from orange and expanding into normal colors with an orange border, the portal appeared.  It was nearly the height of the odd section of wall and taller than the woman.  She looked into it; her face looked out close to the middle of the portal.

The sight that greeted her was an odd one, she saw herself standing in the glass room looking to the right.  She was looking at herself looking at herself.

She could see the well-fitting orange jumpsuit she was wearing, her black shoulder-length hair in a ponytail, and the devices that extended from her knees to the floor.  

The metal objects attached to her had a white section that wrapped around the back of her knees, then a long piece of metal that curved around behind her uplifted ankle.  The items forced her to walk on the balls of her feet and supported her weight.  They weren't uncomfortable, just slightly strange to get used to.

She barely recalled them being referred as some kind of knee replacement device that would help cushion the blow from long falls and save her life.  She hoped they wouldn't be necessary for that use.

The woman glanced over to where it seemed like she was looking from.  She could see another such portal, this time with a blue outline and she could see herself looking through the portal.  So, it seemed that there were two connected portals that functioned as doorways.

She wasn't sure how much she trusted the portals just yet, so she walked over to the table and picked up the clipboard, looking at the contents as she did so.

At the top was her name, Chell.  Underneath this it said "Portal Test Sequence - Hazard Identification Card" and 10 bright yellow squares showing different objects and stick figures meeting various unfortunate ends.  However, the last square contained a picture of a cake.

After she finished looking at the paper on the clipboard, Chell calmly walked over to the portal and tossed it through.  The clipboard landed outside the portal and seemed to be unharmed.  She looked over to where the blue portal was and saw the clipboard lying on the ground nearby.

Well, it had made it through safely, and it was the only way out, so Chell took her first step through the portal.  As she stepped through, there was a swish and a bloop and she arrived safely on the other side.

When the portals had opened, there had been a buzz of fluorescent lights and a large board on one of the outside walls had lit up.  The blue portal had let out next to this board, so Chell took a closer look.

At the top of the white, slightly glowing board were two giant 0's.  Underneath this was a line stating the double zeros again, then a slash, then the number 19.  So, it seemed this was section 00 out of 19 sections.  There'd be 20 sections in total.  Not too bad, really.

Underneath those numbers was a series of small lines, a medium expansion of empty space, and then finally, ten squares just like the ones from the clipboard.  All but the first two were greyed out.  These two were outlined in black, one showed a square falling from some kind of tube and the other showed the same square hitting a stick figure in the head.  So, the only things she had to worry about here were squares falling from the sky.  She'd be careful and keep an eye out for anywhere they could fall from.

She turned around and walked on around the glass room.  The larger room it was in consisted of grey floors, grey walls, and grey ceilings.  Everything was made of squares or rectangles of concrete.  The ground had been cold at first to her bare feet, but it hadn't taken long to get used to.

As she turned the corner around the glass room, the stark walls gained more character.  There was a cylindrical object with an orange circle in the middle and a red dot on the top.  It followed her every movement, so it must be some kind of camera.

Next to the camera was a rectangular window with warped glass that was difficult to see through.  What Chell could see of the room beyond was several computer monitors, a chair, and maybe a desk.  This window must be for watching the tests, but there didn't appear to be anyone inside.  Though, with the cameras, there could be a central location that the woman who spoke to her was watching her from.  Ah, well, it didn't matter how she was being watched, she was being observed regardless.

As she turned the corner again, this wall had another camera, though this one was above a round, open doorway.

All Chell could see of the room beyond was that it contained a large, red button.  She stepped through the doorway, and immediately upon entering the room, the doors behind her shut.

Chell glanced around, looking for another exit, and she found one on the wall furthest from the button, there was another closed door under a camera and a sign with an arrow pointing downwards and a stick figure going out the door.  

Next to the door was a blue square with a black "X" that took up all of the space inside of it.  Underneath the square was a line made out of a series of blue circles that led back to the large button.

The last thing the room contained was a large cylinder device hanging from the ceiling.  There was a large grey cube sitting in the bottom of the container.  With a hiss of air, the bottom of the cylinder opened and dropped the cube with a metallic clank.  After it closed, another cube fell into place at the bottom, waiting for the container to open once more.

Chell glanced at the button; there was a small, blue rectangle on it that had a picture of the square and an arrow pointing downward.  So, the cube activated the button.  Easy enough, though Chell had already surmised that that would be the case, otherwise there wouldn't be a need for the cube.

On the wall behind the button was another window, although this one was smaller.  The room it belonged to appeared to be similar to the one before.

As she walked over to the cube in the corner, Chell glanced to the ground and saw that the same two warnings about the squares were lit up on the ground.  It seemed like whoever owned this place was thorough with the warnings.  That could be useful later, from the looks of the other squares that were on the board.

The cube was quite large; it came up to Chell's waist.  She didn't think it'd be too heavy though, judging from the sound it had made when it dropped.

Each side of the cube was identical.  Each edge of each side had a line separating the middle segment from each side of the corner pieces.  In the middle was a dark grey circle with a light grey circle on the inside that had a faint grey logo of some sort stamped on.

Chell grabbed a line on two adjacent sides of the cube and hefted it up.  It wasn't all that heavy, but its bulk made it hard to carry.  It was slow work bringing the cube to the button; Chell went at it steadily and after several minutes had brought the cube over to the button.

Chell set the cube down carefully on the red button, avoiding dropping it on her exposed toes.  The button sunk down under the weight of the cube and lit up.

Once that was done, the voice spoke again, this time with praise and instructions, "Excellent. Please proceed into the chamberlock after completing each test.  First, however, note the incandescent particle field across the exit.  This Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid will vaporize any unauthorized equipment that passes through it - for instance, the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube."

Chell turned around and looked back towards the door.  The blue line to the box with the "X" was now orange and the "X" replaced with a check mark.  The door was open and there was a short hallway behind it.  She could see the Material Emancipation Grid partially down the hall, it was clear, but there were blue lines flying across between two curved metal objects.  Overall, it looked quite a bit like static on a TV.

She walked out of the door and down the hallway.  As she approached the Grid, two dark grey doors at the end slid open smoothly.  There was a small room behind the doors.  When Chell passed through the Grid, it didn't seem any different from walking down the rest of the hallway.

The small room appeared dingy, there were grey plastic pieces of padding stuck to the top part of the round wall and below them was a railing.  As Chell turned around, the doors closed.  Above the doors was a rectangle blue sign stating "Aperture Laboratories" and the same logo from the cube.  The room began to shake and hum with operation, it was some sort of elevator, but it was impossible to tell if it was going up or down.  

After several moments, it came to a halt and the doors slid open with a musical fanfare like noise and Chell looked out into another grey hallway.


	2. Chamber 01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the second level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the second chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The new hallway that the elevator opened up to had a shorter ceiling and led directly to larger area with a wall with a grey screen.  The lower ceiling prevented Chell from seeing how big the screen was or what contents it might show.  The overall appearance of the area looked like the previous rooms, with concrete surrounding on all sides.

Chell stepped out of the elevator and walked towards the screen.  As she exited the area with the lower ceiling, the screen lit up.  It was a board like the one in the first room.  This one had the number 01 in large print at the top and it said it was 01 out of 19.  It was one more step towards the finish.  However, unlike the previous board, all the squares were greyed out; there were no dangers in this area.  She was thankful for that; Chell didn't like the look of some of the possible future problems, though if the last one was true, the cake was something to look forward to.

She turned and walked past the screen, but didn't get very far.  There was a steep drop off that overlooked the main are of the room.  Directly below her was a medium-sized open area surrounded by three other areas walled off by glass.  

The first area was across from her tall perch.  It looked to be as wide and long as the open section.  On the upper part of the left wall was a window.  Across from that, on the right side, was a closed door.  Next to the door was a familiar looking blue box with an "X".  From what Chell could see, there was an arrow above the door, which meant it was the exit.

Immediately to Chell's right was a camera.  The enclosed area below and behind it was not as long as the open section, but it had the same width.  It only contained a single cube.

On the left, she could see a room that mirrored the one on the right, although instead of a cube, it held a button.  The button was connected to the door like in the other room.

Overall, it felt like a different version of the previous area.  However, there were no doors to each section.  However, if Chell looked closer, she saw that each enclosed section contained a grey piece of wall like the one the orange portal had appeared on in the glass room.  So, portals were going to appear, and she'd have to go from portal to portal to accomplish her goals.

After Chell had finished analyzing the situation, she looked down once more, then jumped down to the level below.  The metal springs attached to her knees absorbed the shock from the impact and she landed safely.

As soon as she hit bottom, the voice spoke again, "Please place the Weighted Storage Cube on the Fifteen Hundred Megawatt Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button."

Chell frowned very slightly, that was a lot of unnecessary words just to say 'Put the Cube on the Button.'  Why did whoever made this place insist on overlong names for simple things?  Oh well, it was their place and they could do what they wanted.  And names weren't really important, as long as Chell could figure out what they were talking about, that was the number one thing.

There was a swoosh from behind her, so Chell turned around.  She was looking directly into a portal with an orange border to see inside the enclosure with the button.

That wasn't what she needed, though.  First, she had to get the cube.  There was only the one gateway in the open area; would it swap to the different enclosures?  

Chell waited a few seconds and the view changed.  This time, she saw the exit door.  Nope, still not the right enclosure, but it should come up with the cube one next.

Seconds later, the portal changed again, and her patience was rewarded with the sight of the cube.  Chell stepped into the portal with no hesitation and within moments was next to the cube.

Chell grabbed the cube by the ridges between segments, using them as handholds.  She picked it up and trudged over to the portal with her prize.

However, because of the bulk of the cube, by the time she reached the portal, it has already closed.  No matter though, it would just be a matter of seconds before it opened up again.

Once the portal appeared before her, Chell hefted the cube through, stepping over the portal's bottom edge.  She then turned around and waited for it to swap to the button, which, if she remembered correctly, would show up the next time it swapped.

After a moment, the portal changed, and her goal was in sight.  She brought the cube through and placed it down on the button with a small sigh of relief.  While the cube was not heavy, it was difficult to hold and the straight metal edges had dug into her hands.  But, she had accomplished what she needed to do.  The button was pressed and lit up, and so was the path to the door.  

Now that the button was engaged, the voice instructed Chell again, "Perfect.  Please move quickly to the chamberlock, as the effects of prolonged exposure to the Button are not part of this test."

Chell eyed the button warily, if there were possible side effects, she didn't want to stick around any extra than she already had to.  Could the button be radioactive?

Well, the end of this area was at hand, she just had to watch for the portal out of this enclosure, and then she'd be away from the button.

Chell didn't have long to wait, and once the blue portal reappeared, she walked through it and out to the main area once more.  The next rotation of portals was the last she needed, once it swapped; she stepped through and made her way towards the door.

The door was open and beyond it was another Grid and elevator.  Chell stepped into the elevator and waited for it to take her to the next floor.


	3. Chamber 02

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the third level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the third chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator arrived shortly on the next floor.  As the elevator doors opened, Chell heard a zapping sound and then a new, unidentifiable noise.  Straight ahead was a lower ceiling and then a bigger area with an information board and a window.  Chell exited the elevator and made her way to the glass to see what was behind it.

Right as she got to the window, the female voice addressed her again.  "You're doing very well!  Please be advised that a noticeable taste of blood is not part of any test protocol but is an unintended side effect of the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid, which may, in semi-rare cases, emancipate dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel, and teeth."

Chell frowned at this information; so far, she hadn't noticed any blood or odd feelings in her mouth.  The voice said that the chance was 'semi-rare' that it could damage her teeth, but what did 'semi-rare' mean?  There were nineteen of these tests, so there'd be nineteen Grids.  Was that enough to cause problems?  

She ran her tongue over her teeth, checking to see if they were in order.  Nothing felt out of place, for now, anyways.

Chell turned her attention back to the window.  She seemed to be as high up as she was in the previous room.  The area behind the glass consisted of two levels.  There was a level on the same height as the section she was currently standing at and there was a lower area that made up the largest part of the room.  The higher level had a darker wall that divided it into two equal parts.

The left part had what looked to be the exit door.  It was hard to tell from here, but there was a sign above an indentation in the wall.  The right side had a portal with an orange border on a section of wall next to the darker barrier.  On the upper part of the right-hand wall was another window.

The lower section of the room was completely walled in on all sides.  In the very middle of the floor was a slightly raised platform that had four arrows pointing in different directions surrounded an oval-shaped device on a thin pedestal.

The item on the pedestal glowed blue from one end, making the zapping noise, then a portal with a blue border appeared in front of it, on the leftmost wall of the area.  After a moment or two, the pedestal rotated, making the strange noise from earlier, then the objected glowed and created another portal on the wall below where Chell was standing.

A gun that shoots portals?  That'd come in handy.  Chell wouldn't have to wait for portals to appear and do what she wanted; she could control it on her own.

But how would she get it?  It was walled in.  However, it looked like there was a square hole in the wall on the right side of the room where it shot a portal through.  If she could get there and go through the portal, it'd be a piece of cake to get the gun.

Chell turned to her right and saw an open doorway with a camera above it.  She walked to the doorway.  There were three stairs and then a small landing with more stairs to the left.  Chell made her way down the stairs, turning at the landing to walk down three more steps.  

She found herself in a rectangular hallway.  At the very end on the upper part of the wall was another camera.  There was also another window above her, overlooking the area.

Chell walked over to the square hole in the wall and looked through.  It was exactly across from the portal gun on the pedestal.  It had just fired a portal on what was the back wall, across from the higher window she had looked down from.  She and watched as it fired portals and rotated from wall to wall, waiting for it to get to her wall.

Once it started rotating in her direction, she stepped away from the window.  She didn't want to know what would happen if a portal hit her.  That could be dangerous.

There was a zapping noise, and a portal with a blue frame appeared on the wall across from the hole.  Chell stepped through the portal and came out at the orange-bordered portal on the upper section.

Straight across was the original window she had looked out of and there was another camera above it.  To the right was the darker barrier, which happened to be a wall with a door in it.

Chell walked to the end of the platform and jumped down with little hesitation.  Once again, the springs attached to her knees absorbed the impact.  She then made her way towards the portal gun.  As she got closer to it, she heard the door on the section she had just left open.

The pedestal had a sign with a blue arrow pointing up at the gun.  Chell reached out and picked it up with both hands.  Once the weight was taken off of it, the pedestal retreated into the ground.

It was an odd looking thing; it was shaped like a long ways oval at the back that extended into a black cylinder with three claw-like projections.  The oval part at the back had a vertical black bar.  She gripped this handhold with her right hand and supported the front end of the gun with her left.

The gun wasn't weighty; it felt solid and well-made in her hands.  She could feel a very slight vibration of energy as she held it.  As she investigated her new tool, the voice addressed her.

"Very good!  You are now in possession of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.  With it, you can create your own portals.  These intra dimensional gates have proven to be completely safe.

The Device, however, has not.  Do not touch the operational end of The Device.  Do not look directly at the operational end of The Device.  Do not submerge The Device in liquid, even partially.  Most importantly, under no circumstances should you..."  The voice slowed down then cut out directly, the lights flickered, and there was a brief sound of static.

Chell waited around for a moment, but the voice did not return.  Seems like the place had some technical difficulties at the oddest times.  Well, she planned on being careful with the gun anyways, so she just would avoid doing anything strange with the gun.  It was a bit worrisome that the gun wasn't proven to be safe, so she'd just keep an eye on it and herself, and if anything felt off, she'd figure something else out.

Upon thinking about it and looking it over a little more, she figured that the last thing the voice neglected to continue was to not drop the gun.  An electronic device like this could be fragile, and something that made portals, if malfunctioning, could cause some interesting problems.

Chell turned around and pointed the gun at the wall below the area with the orange portal and the exit.  She pulled on the handhold, causing a blue flash of light out the front of the gun, and a blue portal appeared before her. The portal gun bucked slightly in her hands, jumping up out of her hold on it, then settling back down into her left hand.  She was thankful that it didn't have a strong recoil and was simple to use.

She stepped through the portal and came out back through the stationary orange one next to the now-open door.  Chell turned to her right and made her way through the door, heading towards the enclosed hallway with the Grid and the elevator.

As Chell passed through the Grid, she paid attention to how her mouth felt.  There didn't seem to be any changes this time, however, the portal gun shook slightly, so she relaxed and continued into the elevator.


	4. Chamber 03

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the fourth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the fourth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The doors slid closed and the elevator moved to the next floor.  Once the doors opened, Chell walked out and into the next grey chamber.

The corridor that the elevator let out into at first glance had no identifying features; it was just another blank concrete wall.

Chell entered the hallway, to the right was a featureless grey wall, but the wall to the left, down the way had a watchful camera and a deactivated screen.  She made her way towards the board, waiting for her movement to activate it so she could see what was going on in this chamber.

As the screen flickered on with a hum, the voice spoke briefly, "Please proceed to the chamberlock.  Mind the gap."

Chell wasn't sure what to make of this, but it wasn't going to be too bad.  None of the hazard squares were highlighted on the information board, so there wasn't going to be any danger.

She rounded the corner to her right and saw the aforementioned gap.  It was several feet to the gap.  It looked slightly ominous with orange lights glowing from the corners that played up the sides of the walls quite a way.  The gap wasn't that deep, it was only the size of all the other drops Chell had seen before, the only difference was that it was walled in on all sides with no way out.

The side of the gap across from where Chell stood was not the standard bland grey she was used to.  It consisted of a black grid screen covering what looked like some kind of inner workings.  There were silver segmented pillars holding up the other section of floor that looked like they might move up and down.  The whole inner area was black and orange; it was the source of the light that could be seen up and down the wall.  From the orange lights on this side of the gap, she guessed that what she was standing on looked much the same.

Right across the gap, the floor continued.  The section on the other side consisted of an orange-tinged portal directly opposite where Chell was standing, a camera up and to the right of the portal, and a window on the right wall.  

Chell turned to her right and pulled the bar to shoot a blue portal on the wall.  She could see herself from a distance, with the camera trained on her.  

It was a little eerie how the cameras were motion-sensitive and paid careful attention to her every move, but it made sense.  The windows were placed to see most of the chambers, but couldn't view everything.  The cameras could make up for their blind spots and add a different perspective.

She stepped through the blue-bordered portal and exited out the orange one, looking directly across from where she had been.  

To her right, there was another gap, however, instead of two starkly straight drop-offs; this one had a series of stairs and one barrier that was holding up the floor, like the previous gap had.

The raised area on the other side consisted of only a camera mounted on the right wall, and more importantly, the exit Grid and elevator.

The solution was simple; Chell fired a blue portal directly across from her, placing it to the right of the exit door.  She turned around and went inside the orange portal, popping out from the one she had just created.

As Chell left the portal, the voice cheered her on in a bored and monotonous tone.  "Well done!  Remember: The Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day is the perfect time to have her tested."

Chell looked perplexed at this declaration; it didn't seem to have anything to do with her current situation.  What sort of tests would be administered to the girls?  Would they go through these portal chambers?  Well, to be honest, they were certainly easy so far, Chell was pretty sure a child could do the same things she had done.  Well, it didn't matter anyways; she didn't have a daughter, so it was pointless to bring it up.  Was this another malfunction, or just some kind of spiel that was required to be spoken to every test person, regardless of the situation?

As she looked once more at the gap, she could see the silver pillars of different lengths holding the stairs up.  Her guess appeared to be right; it seemed they could be lifted up and down to make different heights of floors.  These test chambers could be different every time, all they'd have to do is change how tall the floors were.  Did the walls operate on the same way?  If so, that'd give even more variation to each room.

Chell turned to her right and walked towards the exit door.  She turned right again and made her way through the enclosed hallway.

As she passed through the Grid, once again, she felt nothing, but noticed that the portal gun rocked back and forth in her hands.  What was causing it to be affected like this?  The voice had said that the Grid would destroy unauthorized objects, the gun must be authorized somehow, perhaps the shaking was from some kind of force the Grid was putting out to check for authorization.  It wasn't important though, as long as she got through in one piece, that was all that was important.

Chell stepped into the elevator and walked to the back.  She turned around and leaned against the wall as it went on its way to her next destination.  If all the tests were as easy as these, she'd be done in no time and then she could have some cake.  She was starting to get vaguely hungry, but it wasn't all that bad yet.


	5. Chamber 04

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the fifth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the fifth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator doors opened once it reached the next destination.  Unlike the previous rooms, after the doors parted, Chell could see directly to the exit door across the way.

First, however, was a small hallway that opened out to both sides.  The leftmost wall in this area was blank.  The right side had one of the white boards that flickered to life as she drew near.

As Chell looked at the board, the voice said a few quick words.  "Welcome to test chamber four.  You're doing quite well."  The screen didn't provide any extra information, save that the first two boxes were highlighted, meaning that there was at least one of those cubes somewhere, and it was contained in a cylinder on the ceiling.

She turned her attention back to the main area.  The hallway narrowed again, and after several feet it opened into the main part of the chamber.  However, at the direct end of the hallway was one of the large red buttons with a floor-to-ceiling glass pane behind it.  The left wall next to it had a camera observing her every move.

There was space to the right where Chell could make her way around the glass wall, so she headed there.  As she neared the button, she avoided stepping on it, as there was no sense in it, and if the button happened to be possibly harmful, she wanted as little contact as possible with it.

The space to the right ended shortly in a wall that contained an orange, swirling portal.  To the left was the rest of the room.  

Several feet away was one of the hanging cylindrical cube containers with a cube inside of it.  Underneath it, instead of the level floor Chell was standing on, there was a square pit.

When Chell neared the cube storage container, there was a hiss of air as it opened from the bottom, dumping the cube into the hole below as a camera on the wall behind it watched silently.

Chell got closer and looked down into the depression in the floor.  It was double the depths she had jumped previously.

The ground of the pit consisted of two parts, the larger grey middle section that was like the floor Chell was standing on, and the fiery edges that made up the border surrounding the center.

The edges of the floor of the pit were the eerie glowing orange like the sides of the gap had been in the room before.  There was the square grid covering the glowing space, preventing most things from falling through.  She couldn't see any of the silver pillars, but there did seem to be support beams and holding it up.

The orange glow underneath it all was a mystery.  She couldn't feel any heat, so it most likely wasn't a fire.  Was it just a lighting system that happened to look vaguely creepy?  Was there anything underneath, or was it all for show?

It didn't really matter though.  She could stand here all day wondering about the mysteries of whatever it was, but that wasn't going to get her anywhere.  She turned her attention back to the task at hand.

The cube had landed one of the right corners, luckily, it was closest to the one she was standing at and looking down from.  It was mostly on the orange border, only part of it was leaning on the grey middle.

She glanced over at the wall where the orange portal was.  If she could place a blue portal under the cube, then it'd pop out there, and she wouldn't have to leap into the pit.

Chell took aim, planning to shoot beside the cube, as she didn't want to put a portal directly on top of it, that wouldn't help at all.  Since the portals were oval and longer lengthwise, if she placed it just right, the cube would fall in.

She pulled the trigger and fired, but the blue energy the gun shot flew through the grill and kept going through the orange beyond.  Chell frowned, so the portals could only stick to completely solid surfaces.  Well, maybe the small part of land the cube was on would be enough?

Chell aimed again, this time to the grey floor behind the cube.  The gun placed a lovely portal where she wanted, but only the very end of it seemed to be even touching the cube.

She fired again, adjusting her angle, but the portals didn't cooperate and didn't go into the position she needed them to.

For now, the cube wasn't going anywhere.  There was only one thing left to do.

She exhaled slightly and prepared to jump off to retrieve the cube.  It was in an inconvenient place, but she was going to obtain it one way or another.  Even though the height was taller than she had jumped, she thought that the devices attached to her feet would still protect her.

Chell hopped off the side, falling for several seconds and landing a few feet away from the cube.  The springs shook slightly, but they easily absorbed the impact.

She turned around to address the cube.  First, however, she fired a blue portal onto the wall directly behind it.  

With that done, Chell began to ponder her next move.  She couldn't pick up the cube and hold the portal gun at the same time.  She needed both her hands to complete either task.  She didn't want to put the gun down, that didn't seem like the best option.

She started to investigate the gun further; there was a small button near the vertical bar that was the handhold and the trigger.  Well, there wasn't anything else to do but try it.  She moved her index finger slightly to press the button.

The three clawlike ends of the gun glowed, creating yellow streams of energy between them, looking much like tiny lightning bolts.  For some reason, this created the result she desired, and the cube levitated off of the ground in front of her.

Chell grinned slightly, pleased at this new discovery.  This was quite a bit easier than lugging the metal cubes around.  Now it'd be a breeze to complete tasks that required the cubes to be moved from one place to the other.

She moved the cube through the portal ahead of her and stepped in after it.  It was only a few paces to the button that it needed placed on.

Once she had it in position, Chell pressed the holding control button again and let the cube fall several inches to the red button underneath it.

The button chirped and glowed with activation, and the voice addressed her.  "Once again, excellent work.

As part of a required test protocol, we will not monitor the next test chamber.  You will be entirely on your own.  Good luck."

On her own, huh?  So the voice wouldn't offer any advice about what was to happen in the next chamber.  No matter, it'd probably be simple enough.  Though, Chell doubted that she would be completely unwatched, with all the windows and cameras around, it seemed the point was to observe people as they complete the tests.  It wouldn't make any sense to not watch them during any one test.  She'd see what it'd be like when she got there.

As she passed by the pit, she glanced up and saw a large window on the left wall.  It had a perfect overlook of the main area and the deeper section where the cube had been dumped.

The exit door and elevator wasn't too far now, the cheery orange box with the check of completion was a familiar sight as she passed through the door, into the grill, and onto the elevator.


	6. Chamber 05

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the sixth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the sixth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator ride was short to the next chamber.  When Chell arrived, the hallway she saw in front of her seemed darker than usual.  She could see the edge of a blank screen, so she walked through to see what information it held for her.

The only hazard that would be present here was the possibility of cubes falling.  Not too bad, so far.

She turned to her right and made her way down the rest of the shadowy hallway.  At the end was a square opening with a camera positioned up and to the left of it.  So she was going to be monitored, but the voice had yet to speak again.

Chell passed through the opening and into the main area.  In front of her was a large, red button on the ground and behind that, another identical button.  She followed the blue dotted lines to them and saw that to the left was the exit door, this time with two blue boxes with "X" inside of them.  So, she had to activate both buttons.

Looking around, she saw that to her right was a thick silver pillar holding up a section of floor.  On top of this perch was a cube sitting close to the right-hand wall.

Now to find the orange portal.  She glanced across the room and saw that there was an identical pedestal.  However, on the wall it was up again, this one contained the portal she sought.  

Next to the portal's pedestal was a medium window.  Like the others, she could sort of see inside, but didn't see anything human-shaped within.

Back to the task at hand, Chell considered her options.  The location of the portal she couldn't control was a bit inconvenient, but she'd make it work.

She turned around and fired a blue portal at the wall to the left of the opening she had come through and entered it.

Chell was now directly across from the cube she needed.  She was able to see the whole room better and found that to the left of where she was standing was a hole of the normal depth she was used to.  Down in this pit was another cube.  She'd get the one that was opposite of her first, then concentrate on the one down there.  She was going to take this one thing at a time.

She looked back to the first cube and aimed the portal gun to point directly behind it.  Chell fired and watched as a blue-outlined portal appeared where she wanted it.

Turning around to look through the orange portal behind her, Chell saw the cube across the room.  Through the portal, she could also see her back and herself looking through the portal looking at herself.  It was a bizarre sight.

She moved back and forth and lifted the gun, watching herself move.  The overall effect was like a strange sort of mirror.

Chell turned her attention back to the task at hand.  She stuck the portal gun and part of her arms through the portal.  Then, she pressed the lifter button and used the gun to grab the cube.

The cube floated through the air in front of her.  Chell backed up slightly, just enough to get the cube free and clear.

She hopped down from the platform, bouncing slightly on the springs and placed the cube on the nearest button, it was the second button she had seen.

Upon having a cube placed on it, the button made its pleasant activation noise and lit up its pathway.

Satisfied with that, Chell walked over to the pit to consider the second cube.  

It was completely on the grey part of the hole's floor, unlike the one in the previous room.  Chell shot a portal right underneath it, and it fell through with a clank.

She looked up to where the orange portal was, and sure enough, her prize was now on the platform.

Chell turned to her right and fired a blue portal at the wall next to the silver pillar.  She walked over to it and stepped through.  

The cube had slid a little from being transported from one portal to another, so it was closer to the edge of the platform than the wall.

It only took a few steps to get to the cube.  Once she was close enough, Chell use the portal gun to lift it, then jumped off the platform.

She made her way to the unpressed button and dropped the cube on it.  It activated, and since both buttons were now pressed, the door slid open with a metallic clank.

Chell passed through the door and found herself in an odd little room.  The door immediately closed behind her and the voice addressed her.  "As part of a required test protocol, our previous statement suggesting that we would not monitor this chamber was an outright fabrication.  

Good job!  As part of a required test protocol, we will stop enhancing the truth in three...Two..."  Before she could say 'one', there was a sudden burst of static and her voice cut out.

Chell had suspected that they were going to monitor the room, and the windows and cameras had proved her hunch right.  Now the voice had confirmed it.

What was worth more of her thoughts, however, was the room she was in now.  There were no doors, except the firmly closed ones behind her.  The walls were the familiar grey concrete.  However, the ceiling was made of glass, and an orange portal was on the grey ceiling above that.

Ready to get on to the next task, Chell placed a portal on the wall in front of her and entered it.

She suddenly found herself falling face-first towards the ground.  It wasn't a long fall, but she barely had enough time to catch herself, landing on her hands and feet in a spread out manner, much like a cat does after it has found itself in a similar situation.

Chell had been used to going through portals like one walked through doors.  You expected the ground to still be underneath you when you passed through.  She had neglected to consider the nature of portals; whatever entered first would leave first, no matter where it was situated.

She was glad she had learned this lesson now, instead of later, when there could be some of those nasty-looking hazards present.  It was an important thing to remember, and she planned on keeping it at the forefront of her thoughts while doing the tasks ahead.

Once she had re-orientated herself, she turned to walk through a familiar-looking hallway towards the Grid and the elevator.


	7. Chamber 06

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the seventh level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the seventh chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

Usually the elevators took a bit to get going once Chell got inside, but this time, the doors closed behind her as soon as she walked past them and the elevator started moving.  It was a quick trip to the next chamber.

When the elevators opened, the sight in front of her was drastically different than the other rooms she had been to previously.  

The floor and ceiling were the same familiar grey as she had been previously nearly surrounded with.  However, the left and right walls were a dark grey that nearly looked metallic.  Even stranger was the fact that each individual segment looked like it was partially raised up, with the edges sloping towards a flat section in the middle.  The deeper tones of the walls made the hallway and room look more ominous and darker.

The Grid and elevator were not behind a door this time; instead, they were in an open square nook across the way.

There was some kind of odd raised platform on a small silver stand that was in front of the exit.

The middle of the room contained two strange objects.  From where Chell was, she couldn't get a good look, so she headed down the strange hallway.

As she made her way to the main area, on her right, an information board lit up.  Since she wasn't sure what was in the room, Chell felt like it was a good idea to see what was in store for her.

The third and fourth squares were now highlighted.  The first of these squares consisted of a stick figure being hit violently in the face with some kind of ball.  The second one showed a ball falling downward into some kind of clawed thing.

While Chell was wondering what exactly was going to happen here, the voice gave her some helpful information.  "While safety is one of many Enrichment Center goals, the Aperture Science High Energy Pellet, seen to the left of the chamber, can and has caused permanent disabilities such as vaporization.

Please be careful."

She recoiled slightly at this information and looked back to the sign, then to the Pellet in question.  It was dangerous enough to vaporize somebody?  And that was merely a 'disability' in the thoughts of the voice.  Something was off here.

Chell glanced back to the closed elevator with a sigh.  Well, she was going to have to tangle with the vaporizer one way or another.

She walked further into the room and studied the situation.

As the voice had so helpfully informed her, the Pellet was to her left.

On the ceiling was a strange looking white dome that had three metal bars coming out from the sides that converged into one circle at the bottom facing the ground.

Below the dome was a seething orange portal, ready to be opened when Chell deemed it so.

Between these two was the Pellet.  It was a bright sort of thing, round like a ball and glowing like a light bulb or miniature sun.  It had a shining nucleus in the middle and was surrounded by an iridescent and translucent larger orb.  The Pellet was a thing of beauty with a deadly secret.  It rotated and spun, bouncing repeatedly from dome to floor portal and back again, upon each impact it would send off a shower of gleaming sparks that rapidly vanished from sight.

As it moved, it hummed with the pure energy that it contained, with each impact; it gave a jaunty ping as it ricocheted away.  It started at the dome and made its way to the floor, after eight total impacts, four to both the floor and ceiling, the thing suddenly vanished with a loud dissipating bang.  After several seconds, another shimmering ball would come into being and start the cycle all over again.

Overall, Chell figured it was close to the size of her head.  The warning sign was a fairly accurate portrayal of the object, and she was certain she didn't want to meet the stick figure's doomed fate.

Too bad she wasn't able to control both portals; otherwise she could just put one by the exit and one out of harm's way and just leave without having to mess with the Pellet.  But, it was guarding the orange portal, so she'd just have to deal with it as quickly as possible.

To the right was an unfamiliar item.  It was the clawed thing she had seen on the information board.  The main part was a medium-sized circle, about the size of the Pellet's dome.  In the middle was a smaller circle with a hole in its center that beamed out an orange-red light.  At equal intervals, there were three clawlike pieces of metal that had vertical pieces attached to their tops.  Each piece of metal was hinged, so they were capable of movement somehow.

The picture had shown the ball falling into this strange container, and the Pellet was bouncing against a portal.  Chell looked up, and right above the object was a medium-sized dot of red-orange light.

Chell aimed for this beacon and fired a blue portal up on the ceiling.  After a moment, she was rewarded with a Pellet rapidly descending towards its new destination.

Upon impact with the circle, the thing folded in upon itself in a burst of blue electricity.  The pieces of metal moved to be flat with the ground.  Chell looked in at it cautiously; the Pellet was surrounded by blue flowing energy.

Her success was praised by the voice.  "Unbelievable!  You, Subject Name Here, must be the pride of Subject Hometown Here."  When she said 'Subject Name Here' and 'Subject Hometown Here', her tone changed and sounded almost unfamiliar.

This was fairly baffling to Chell; wouldn't the voice know who she was?  The voice was in control of everything, after all.  It was supposed to be a compliment, but how could you compliment somebody if you read strictly off the script and failed to learn the name of the people who were in essence helping you out.

Bah.  It wasn't important.  But, there was something odd going on, this, combined with the previous malfunctions proved that.  Chell would have to keep aware of the situation.

The container for the Pellet had activated an energy line; Chell followed it with her eyes and saw it was connected to the platform.  However, because the Pellet was now in its proper place, the platform had lowered so that Chell could stand on it.

She didn't need the platform, though.  Now that the Pellet was safely restrained, she could just put a portal on the hallway wall and jump through the orange one on the ground.

Chell aimed the portal gun at the right-hand side of the exit hallway and fired.  The blue energy made its way to the wall and promptly proceeded to bounce off in a bright shower of sparks.

That was...different.  She wasn't used to that.  So the odd dark metal walls couldn't hold a portal.  Was it because the individual segments had raised edges?  It was something to think about.  For now though, she just wanted to get to the next chamber.

As she walked to the platform, she glanced around the room a little further.  To distance itself even further from the familiarity of the previous rooms, some of the squares in the wall were sunken in and lit up from an unknown light source.  To the high left, overlooking the Pellet dome, was a long observation window.

Chell looked down at the platform before she stepped on it.  It was square, with curving rails on the left and right sides.  The border of the platform was white, but the entire middle was clear.  She could see the crisscrossing bars that held it together.

As soon as she was on the platform, it started up and began to move.  It made a sort of vrooming noise as it activated and gently hummed as it traveled upwards.  It stopped right at the ledge for Chell to get off, making an almost disappointed-sounding grumble.

She walked down the dark hallway and through the Grid to the elevator.


	8. Chamber 07

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the eighth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the eighth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

Once again, the elevator ride to the next test chamber was brief and uneventful.  

When the doors opened, Chell looked out into a hallway that led to a larger room.  The back wall of the larger room was made out of the strange darker metal, so that meant she couldn't use portals there.

But, the ceiling and floor appeared to be the regular grey concrete, so there wouldn't be any problems there.  However, the ceiling looked to have a device to catch a Pellet, so there'd probably be one bouncing about.

The exit appeared to be in a nook on the right side of the back wall.

Chell walked down the concrete hallway and into the main room.  As she entered the larger space, the voice spoke.  "Warning devices are required on all mobile equipment.  However, alarms and flashing hazard lights have been found to agitate the high energy pellet and have therefore been disabled for your safety."

She was perplexed by this information.  The glowing, bouncing balls could be agitated?  They were pure energy, they couldn't have emotions.  Could they?  Maybe the noises and lights did something to their energy structure that caused them to bounce erratically.

Speaking of the lights and alarms, the voice had said they were required on mobile equipment, so there must be something in the room that moved that was impressive to need alerts.

There were several stairs that led down into the main chamber.  Below the Pellet holding device was an orange portal on a slightly raised platform.  

As Chell looked around the room, she saw the Pellet bouncing back and forth between the left and right walls.

The Pellet came out of the dome that was like the one in the room previous to this one.  Since it was on the wall, instead of the ceiling, she could get a better look at the dispenser.  

It looked very much like the catcher when open.  However, the inside glowed an orange-red, instead of the white or blue that the container it was supposed to enter had.

Unlike the previous Pellet, this one bounced back and forth 4 times total, then exploded with a flash and a bang, to be replaced seconds later by a new one.

The room was wider than the other one was tall.  Instead of counting bounces, maybe each Pellet had a limited time it existed.  It was said to contain 'high-energy', so maybe it could only exist for so long until it burnt itself out.

Chell looked to the right, watching the Pellet on its trajectory.  When it impacted the wall, it left black burn marks.  Some were there from previous bounces, the more bounces there were, the darker it got.  The pellets were strong enough to burn concrete, and the concrete walls were strong enough to not be vaporized.

Also to the right was another information board, though it had the same squares highlighted as the last room did.  

Past the board and the Pellet impact point was a medium-length window that extended until it hit the boundary between the normal grey concrete and the darker grey metal.  

Approximately a third of the room consisted of the dark metal walls, while the rest was concrete.  Close to the beginning of this section were two silver pillars that were several feet apart.  

On top of each pillar was a strange object that was white with a streak of blue.  In shape they looked like large hammers with the blunt end pointed up and the handles pointing towards each other.  They were mirror images of each other, except the leftmost one had what looked to be a platform on top of it.  Between the bizarre items was a thin line of blue light.

The pillars were on the ground, like the rest of the floor, most of it was grey concrete, except for the area directly around the pillars and underneath the blue line.  This ground was the ominous orange protected by a metal grid.  It gave that section of the room an eerie look, as it bathed the walls and ceiling in its orange glow. 

Time to get to work.  The orange portal was in a quite helpful position, all she needed to do was place a blue one where the Pellet would enter it, and it'd go nicely into the proper container.

Chell aimed a portal directly in the middle of the charred impact point on the right and fired.  The blue portal went where she wanted it to.  Now all she had to do was wait a few seconds for the Pellet.

The Pellet bounced off of its creator and made its way to the portal.  It flew through the blue portal, exited out the orange, and landed into the container.  It was greeted with a burst of blue electricity and the metal claws folded back into the ceiling.

The voice spoke and instructed her further.  "Good.  Now use the Aperture Science Unstationary Scaffold to reach the chamberlock."

Unstationary scaffold?  Chell heard something hum to life, and the platform on the top of the left strange object started moving, riding the glowing blue line.  Once it reached the right object it stopped for a moment, then went back the way it came.

The platform was too high up to jump on, so there'd have to be another way to access it.  

The metal walls surrounded the platform on the walls and ceiling, except for the ceiling above where the platform had started out.

There was only one thing to do, Chell eyed the concrete, trying to estimate where the platform would start and fired a blue portal above it.

She then walked over to the orange portal in the floor and looked through it.

Since the blue portal was in the ceiling, it offered an unusual vantage point.  She saw herself walking around down below and positioning herself around the orange portal.

Getting closer, looking through the very bottom of the portal, she could see the top of the objects that held up the scaffold and the light line that it rode on.  Chell heard the platform's hum get louder as it approached closer to where she was lying in wait for it.

Once she saw the glass platform below her, Chell stepped through the portal.  She landed feet-first on the Unstationary Scaffold.

It hummed to life again and made its way across the room, heading towards the exit.  

It stopped right in front of the indentation in the wall where the Grid and elevator were placed.  Chell only needed to step up slightly to reach the metal ground.

She was glad there were no lights and sirens that warned about the moving platform, they would have been annoying to deal with.

Chell passed through the Grid and walked into the open doors of the elevator.


	9. Chamber 08

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the ninth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the ninth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.
> 
> I decided that since the deadly floor looks so awful, it probably has a nasty smell as well. There's no canon evidence to back it up, but it looks so disgusting that I thought it'd be an interesting addition.

Chell wasn't in the elevator long when it reached the next chamber.  There was a hallway ahead of her leading to an open room.  The exit was straight across from where she was.

It looked like any other chamber she had in, with one key difference.  There was some kind of awful smell floating through the air.  Chell wrinkled her nose in distaste.  What in the world was it?

She walked out of the elevator, glancing around.  Everything in this area seemed normal; the smell must be coming from the main section.

Chell made her way down the hallway; it widened out in the middle and then thinned back down again.  The wider middle section was blank to the right and had an information screen on the left.

When Chell drew close, the screen lit up with a hum.

Before she could inspect it further, the voice gave her some new information.  "Please note that we have added a consequence for failure.  Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an 'unsatisfactory' mark on your official testing record followed by death.  Good luck!"

She recoiled in horror at this revelation.  So there now was another way to die in the chambers.  First the energy pellet and now death floors.

The death floor was a new addition, so that meant it was most likely the source of the stench. 

She turned her attention back to the board to see what it had to say about this chamber.

On the first row of squares, the last three were highlighted.  The first two of these were the ones with the energy Pellet.  The third was a picture of a stick person up to their neck in water with squiggly lines coming from each of the four corners.  It looked as if the figure was being electrocuted while floating.  So the death floor was some kind of liquid that would shock you.  Pleasant.

The second row of squares only had one highlighted picture.  This one showed a circle with a diagonal line through it over a picture of a stick figure drinking out of a water fountain.  Obviously it was telling you to not drink the water.  If the water killed you by mere touch, why would you even think about drinking it?  The warning seemed unnecessary.

Well, she better get on with it, the longer she stood around, the longer she had to smell the disgusting stink.

She turned and continued down the hallway.  The grey floor ended and a metal grid one began.  The metal grid was sticking out of the wall with a guardrail around it.  

Chell stood on the bizarre balcony and looked out over the main part of the chamber.  Below her was the death floor.  It was a slowly swirling mass of reds, greens, and yellows.  It looked like several different kinds of paint had spilled and putrefied.  Every so often, Chell thought she saw a faint wisp of steam roiling off of the sludge and into the air.  Here, right above the toxic pool, the stench was nearly overpowering.

The right wall attached to the balcony was blank, but father on down towards the exit, there were several things of interest.

The first thing she saw was an unmoving Unstationary Scaffold that seemed to lead towards the door.  There was a blue dotted line that lead from it to an energy Pellet container.  The wall behind the container was the odd metal surface.

To her left, beside the metal balcony, was a Pellet-releasing dome.  She watched the Pellet as it bounced around.  It made 3 full bounces and was close to ricocheting again when it exploded.

On the left wall, past the dome, was an orange portal that had a platform that was lifted up on a silver pedestal.  

Even further down the wall was a long window that looked like it was close to across from the Pellet collector.

There were burn marks on the small wall opposite the Pellet launcher from where the Pellets had pinged against in their constant bouncing movement.

It would be a little tricky to accomplish the goal here.  The Pellets moved quickly, so she'd have to move the blue portal faster, in order to move the Pellet where she wanted it to go.

First, Chell took aim at the scorch mark, that was where the Pellet was going, and the only option she had in order to transport it.  She fired a blue portal and waited for the Pellet to make its way to it.

The Pellet sailed through the blue portal and out the orange one.  She watched as the Pellet bounced against the wall, leaving a burnt space and back towards the orange portal.

Since the Pellet container had the useful feature of shining a red-orange light on the surface opposite of it, she was able to easily aim the portal gun and create a portal right across from the catcher.

The Pellet made its way towards its destination, and upon arriving in the collector, it was greeted with blue electricity and was contained.

Now that the Pellet was in place, the Unstationary Scaffold started moving towards the exit.

There were no connecting platforms to the Scaffold, so the only option was to get there by portals.

Since the orange portal was already in place and was unable to be moved, she'd have to use two blue portals to arrive safely at the Scaffold.

Chell turned to her right and created a blue portal at the first available wall space.  She walked through and found herself on the orange portal's platform, across from her destination.

She then made a new blue portal slightly above the Scaffold's docking point, then turned around to observe through the orange portal.  

If she missed the Scaffold, she'd fall to a nasty, sludgy, and probably painful death.  That wasn't an option, so she was going to be as careful as possible.

Once the Scaffold paused briefly at its station, Chell quickly walked into the orange portal and out of the blue, stepping onto the glass platform.

Her goal was nearly in reach, she was riding on the path to victory.  

As the Scaffold grew near to the metal balcony on the opposite side, the voice spoke again, "Very impressive.  Please note that any appearance of danger is merely a device to enhance your testing experience."

Chell snorted slightly at this.  She didn't care if her testing experience was enhanced or not, she just wanted to get out of this ordeal alive.  If she was lucky, there wouldn't be any more of the sludge pits, but she wasn't getting her hopes up.  At least she was getting used to its stench.

Once the Scaffold reached the metal balcony, Chell disembarked and walked briskly through the grid and into the waiting elevator.


	10. Chamber 09

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the tenth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the tenth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator shook and hummed as it made its way to the next test chamber.  When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, Chell looked out into a hallway that looked similar to several that she had seen before.  The hallway lead to another room, Chell couldn't see much of it at the moment, just that it had a cube storage tube in the ceiling.

As she looked out towards the room, Chell saw the container drop a cube to the ground.  After the tube sealed itself, another cube fell into the bottom of it, taking the place of the previous one.

She walked out of the elevator and into the hallway.  It widened out in the middle, then closed back in at the very last section before the main room.

As Chell entered the wider section of the hallway, the voice spoke to her.  "The Enrichment Center regrets to inform you that this next test is impossible.  Make no attempt to solve it."

Once the voice was done delivering this message, an orange portal appeared somewhere in the upper right part of the main chamber.  She could only see about half of it from where she was.

Of more importance was what the voice had said.  This part was impossible?  Then why even have it?  There was a portal and a cube so far, no different than any of the other tests before, so it didn't make any sense that it couldn't be completed.

She looked over to her right, while the voice had spoken; the information board had lit up.  The only squares that were highlighted were the first two regarding the cube.

There were no death traps, so that just added to the strangeness of the situation.  It'd be easier to believe that it was impossible if there was something that could kill her.  Unless there was some sort of secret trap, but that didn't seem likely.

Chell made her way to the main area to survey the situation.  The room was mostly the standard grey concrete enclosure, so she could put portals in most places.  Only the rightmost wall was made of the strange metal that couldn't support a portal.

She looked at this wall first.  Towards the top was a small square hole that opened into a second chamber.  Below this was a larger open hole that had a Grid that spanned across it.

As Chell was looking at this wall, the voice spoke again, "The Enrichment Center apologizes for this clearly broken test chamber."

Next, she looked up at the orange portal to the left.  As long as it was still there, she could do something for her situation.  It was located up on a platform.  Close to the orange portal's perch was a small observation window.

To the right of the platform and the portal was a sunken in area where the cube cylinder was attached to the ceiling and where the cube it had dumped was resting.

Chell then looked at the other room behind the Grid.  A few steps in front of her was a red button on the ground that had the power line that connected to the door.  The door was behind the button and directly across from where she was standing.

The voice addressed her a third time, "Once again, the Enrichment Center offers its most sincere apologies on the occasion of this unsolvable test environment."

She wished the voice would shut up already.  There was a way to solve this puzzle; she just needed to think about it.  And it was a little hard to do so when the voice kept talking about how impossible the whole situation was.

She needed to get the cube to the button, but the Grid was in the way.  Previously, the voice had told her that cube would be vaporized if it went through the Grid.  Chell had never seen what would happen; usually she needed the cube to stay on the button it was placed on, in order to hold the door open.

There was another cube in the container, so she'd just have to figure out how to get it open if the cube she had now really did get vaporized.

So, she walked over to the cube and used the portal gun to lift it up.  Chell then turned around and went back to where the grid was.  Because the gun levitated the cube a foot or two away from her body, she could stand back slightly as she maneuvered the cube to pass through the Grid.

As soon as it hit the Grid, the cube was surrounded by yellow sparks, turned black and floated out of the portal gun's grasp, then it vanished in a flash of sparks.  This happened in a span of seconds and was completely silent.  It had been eerie to watch.  She passed through those things easily, but the cube had been destroyed without a trace.  Chell only hoped that it wouldn't malfunction one of these times and vaporize her as well.

Once the cube was destroyed, she heard the container open and another cube fall to the ground.  She was thankful for that; it was much easier then trying to force the cylinder open to give her another one.  

Since the cube couldn't be easily transported to the other side, she decided to try and fire a portal through the Grid.  When she did so, the blue energy just dissipated through the grid.

The voice spoke again, "Frankly, this chamber was a mistake.  If we were you, we would quit now."

Chell was starting to get more annoyed with the voice.  Sure, the first two things she had tried didn't work, but she still had more ideas.  There was the space above the grid, after all.  This chamber wasn't impossible, no matter what the voice told her. 

She left the cube for now and created a blue portal on the space of wall next to where it was resting.  she walked through and found herself up on the platform.

From this higher perch, it gave a perfect place to look through the higher hole in the metal wall.  Chell did a quick experiment and fired a portal through it.  A blue portal appeared on the wall in the other room.

Since that worked, Chell was able to figure out the solution to this supposedly impossible puzzle.

However, the voice tried to discourage her yet again, "No one will blame you for giving up.  In fact, quitting at this point is a perfectly reasonable response."

Chell snorted slightly, it wasn't reasonable at all, she almost had it complete.  Quitting now would be absurd.

She hopped off of the platform, the springs bending slightly as she hit the ground.  She made her way back over to the cube and fired a blue portal behind it.

Using the gun to pick up the cube, she lifted it up and passed it through the portal, then followed after it.  Once they were both on the upper platform, Chell placed the cube down for a moment.

She aimed a blue portal through the upper hole again, once it was in place Chell picked up the cube again and turned around to walk through the orange portal.

Just as she was about to pass the cube through it, the voice had a new proclamation, "Quit now and cake will be served immediately."

That made Chell pause for a moment.  Some cake would be nice.  But, the cake square wasn't lit up on the information panel, so that meant it wasn't time for it yet.  Why would she be rewarded for failure?  She almost had this chamber finished, there'd only be 10 more until it was time for her much deserved snack.  If they were anything like the previous ones, it'd be no time at all until she would be eating cake.  No matter how much she wanted, she wasn't to give up for dessert.  Besides, how in the world would she be able to quit anyways?

Chell turned back to the task at hand and went through the portal.  She fell through to the floor of the second room, the springs absorbing the impact again.

Once her footing was steady, she made her way with the cube over to the button.  Chell dropped the cube down and activated the button.

The voice congratulated her, "Fantastic!  You remained resolute and resourceful in an atmosphere of extreme pessimism."

Chell shook her head slightly; the voice had been more of a nuisance than anything.  She had never been discouraged by it at all.  Was it a test to see how she reacted under a negative situation?

Well, it was over now, so it didn't matter.  She turned around and made her way to the now open doorway and walked through it.

The hallway to the elevator was different than usual, there was a wall straight ahead, and the path made a turn to the left.

She rounded the corner and walked to the Grid, passing through it and stepping right into the elevator.


	11. Chamber 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the eleventh level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the eleventh chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator doors closed and it started its journey to the next test chamber.  The doors opened after several moments, and Chell looked out into the area.

There was a medium-length hallway in front of her that ended with an area that looked rather strange.  Chell walked down the hallway, curious to see what it lead to.

When she reached the exit of the hallway, the voice spoke to her, "Hello again.  To reiterate..." The voice suddenly sounded staticy for a moment, then went back to understandable, "previous warning..."  The voice glitched again, this time for longer.  It was impossible to understand the words that were being said, there was no rhyme or reason to it.  Sometimes the words were slowed down and sometimes they were sped up and there was some static.  Suddenly, the voice went back to normal for one final word, "momentum."

Chell frowned slightly.  Another glitch that prevented her from understanding the voice's instructions.  She hoped this wouldn't cause a problem if there was a difficult test that she had to do.  She waited a moment to see if the voice would return, but it did not.  Chell shrugged, then moved to the main room.

The odd thing she had seen from the elevator was a raised section of floor that made stairs.  They were up on the silver pillars, which were resting on the grid with the orange glow below.  The entire area under the stairs was bathed in red-orange light.

The stairs led up to an open exit door situated in a metal wall.  She could see part of the room through the door; it also consisted of walls made of metal.

The information board was on the wall next to the first stair.  Chell couldn't see details from where she was, but she could tell that the first two squares on the bottom row were highlighted.

The stairs were too high up to jump or climb up on, and she didn't know where the orange portal was.  Was it in the room beyond or somewhere else?

Both the walls next to her were empty, Chell turned around, looking all about her.

Directly above the door and where she was standing was a metal pillar sticking out of a metal grill with orange lights that was in the wall.  Attached to the pillar was a vertical section of wall.  

Chell backed up towards the stairs, looking up at this, trying to see what the sticking out wall piece looked like.  

The front of the wall came into view, and Chell could see that the orange portal was resting on it.

This was a bit unusual, if she walked through a portal down where she was standing; would the one that was up higher push her out onto the stairs?

Well, the only thing to do was try it.  Chell turned to her right and placed a blue portal on the wall, then walked through it.

It was quite disorientating when she came out of the orange portal in midair and fell to the ground.

The fall wasn't long, however, and she landed safely on the first stair.  Chell shook her head slightly, then walked over to the information board to get a better look at what was in store for her.

The two highlighted squares on the board showed similar pictures.  The first one had a stick figure jumping off of a ledge into a portal.  The second one showed the stick figure flying out of a portal above the ledge.

So, it looked like this test was about reaching further distances by launching oneself into one portal that was at a lower position than the other.

Apparently, getting onto the stairs was the first part, as she had been on level ground when entering the first portal.  Likely, the next room would have a scenario similar to the one shown on the board.

Chell continued walking up the steps and into the second room.

As soon as she entered, the door closed behind her and she heard a soft, swirling thunk.  There was a portal somewhere in the room, but at first glance, the entire place was made nearly entirely of the odd metal.  

On the right wall was a long observation window.  Several feet in front of Chell was a gap in the floor.  On the other side of the gap was an exit door that lead into another metal room.

As Chell walked closer to the gap, she saw on the ground two lighted squares that showed the same images from the information board.  Standing close to the edge, she looked down below.

The floor in the gap was quite a ways down.  The middle part was the standard concrete she was used to, and surrounding it was a thin line of metal grillwork.

There wasn't a portal down there, but if she followed the pictures, it should be somewhere behind her.

Chell turned around and saw a section of concrete wall a ways above the door she had come through.

Part of this concrete wall, however, was pushed out from the rest of it by a metal pillar.  On the front of this section was an orange portal.

Copying the picture, Chell walked back to the gap and fired a blue portal down into the pit.  She took a deep breath and jumped off feet first.

She sailed through the blue portal easily and came out of the orange one.  However, she came out feet-first and found herself flying on her back, looking up at the ceiling.

Unable to see her destination, she landed with a crash on the other side of the gap.

The voice congratulated her, "Spectacular.  You appear to understand how a portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does not."

Chell lied on her back for a moment, trying to regain her bearings.  The pain from her awkward impact subsided quickly, so she sat up and shook her head.  That hadn't gone exactly well.  She had crossed the gap, but she had forgotten to take into consideration that whatever went in the portal first would come out first.  

The pictures were incorrect, in order to fly out of the portal like the second one showed, she'd have to dive in face-first.  Chell wasn't thrilled about that, if she made a mistake or something went wrong, she'd smash her face in on the cold concrete floor.  The knee springs couldn't save her from that.

Chell ran a hand through her messy hair; she'd have to be more careful about taking these jumps.  There had to be a way to make it across safely.  Jumping off like she normally did was going to end her up like she was now.  If she dove off, using it like a diving board, she could see where she was heading towards, but it was likely she'd just smack into the ground again.

What if she jumped in with her body parallel to the portal?  She'd come out with everything facing the right way and her feet would be pointing to the ground.  It'd be hard to jump off that way, but it was the best chance she had at not falling into a heap on the ground.

Chell got to her feet and made her way through the nearby dark hallway and the door at the end.  

As soon as she passed through and entered the next room, the door shut behind her.  Like the previous room, this one appeared to be made entirely of metal.  There was also a gap in this room, but it seemed to have two ledges higher than it across the way.  On top of the higher ledge was another exit door.  There were two observation windows in this room, one on each side.  The one on the right wall overlooked the gap, while the one on the left oversaw the ledges.

Chell walked to this gap, right in front of it was a lighted square on the ground.  However, instead of showing a picture, it showed a single dot.

Stepping forward to look into the gap, Chell saw several different things.  This gap had a small concrete space in the middle that was almost entirely taken up by the orange portal.  Next to, and around, this space was a winding series of concrete stairs held up by silver pillars.  Everything was resting on a metal grid that had an orange light glowing from within.  This time, she could see more of the pipe holding things up.

She turned around to see if there was another vertical platform she could launch herself from.  There was a concrete section of wall above the door, and as she looked at it, a section of it extended out from the wall with a mechanical whir.

This room was opposite of the other.  This time, she had to place a portal above and leap into one below.  If there was a problem, all she had to do was walk up the stairs to reach where she had entered and try again.  That must be why the ledges were taller, so that you couldn't just walk out from the stairs and skip the puzzle entirely.

Well, time to get to work.  Chell aimed the portal gun at one of the upper parts of the extended section of concrete and fired.  A blue portal appeared exactly where she wanted it to.

She turned back around to the gap below.  Chell wanted to make sure she did this right and wasn't stuck climbing up the stairs or flying out of the portal at odd angles again.  She'd have to jump off in a sort of skydiving position, except if she spread her arms out, she wouldn't make it through the portal.  She'd have to keep compact in order to get through.

Chell took a deep breath and jumped upwards and off of the platform.  As she fell, she rotated her body until she was flying front-first at the portal.  She passed through the orange portal and came flying out of the blue one she had positioned.  It felt like she was falling, but her orientation had changed, so in reality, she was going sideways instead of down.

She landed on the lower ledge, the springs bending quite a bit under her impact.  She stumbled slightly, using the wall in front of her to brace herself, then regained her balance.  That went a lot smoother than last time.  

Chell gave a sigh of relief, and the voice informed her that "Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals.  In layman's terms, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out."

She turned around, as there was nowhere else to go.  As she did so, Chell saw the top row of the extended concrete go out further until it was almost directly above her.  

When the wall section started moving, the blue portal on it disappeared.  So, portals couldn't be on moving surfaces.  That'd be useful to remember.  Portals didn't seem to be entirely stable; they had to be on motionless, flat surfaces.  What would happen if you were partially through when it started moving and the portal closed?  You'd be chopped in half, or worse.  She didn't really want to think about that and hoped that it wouldn't come to something like that.

Chell put a new blue portal on the concrete wall that was above her, then walked to the edge.    Before the ground gave way to gap, Chell saw another lighted square, this time with two dots.  Then, she looked through the orange portal below.

She could see the exit door, but the sign was upside down.  She gave a weary sigh.  This wasn't going to be easy.  No matter how she jumped out, she was going to end up smacking into the ground.  The only way to not was to back flip through the portal, and she didn't really want to try that.

If she did the skydive jump again, she'd come up with her head towards the ground and land on it.  That would be painful, fatal, or both.  So she was either going to fly through facing the door and land on her back or jump through feet-first and land on her stomach.

Landing on her back seemed the less dangerous of the two options, so Chell gritted her teeth and dove off face-first towards the portal below.

It was disorientating traveling through the portal with her entire perspective flipped upside down.  

She hit the ground on her back and her momentum caused her to slide until she was right in front of the Grid.  Chell looked up, watching the blue lines travel back and forth as she regained her sense of direction.  The pain went away rapidly, and she made her way to her feet and passed through the Grid, heading straight for the elevator.

The doors closed behind her and it traveled to the next chamber.


	12. Chamber 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the twelfth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the twelfth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.
> 
> I was uncertain of how to have the portal gun upgrade to 2 portals, the way the game does it makes sense for a game, but not for real life.

As the elevator landed, and right before the doors opened up, Chell heard the noise of a portal being placed.

The elevator doors slid open and Chell looked out into a small hallway with a staircase that lead up to a larger room.

She left the elevator and made her way up the stairs.  As she stood at the top of them, the voice spoke to her.

"The Enrichment Center promises to always provide a safe testing environment.  In dangerous testing environments, the Enrichment Center promises to always provide useful advice.  For instance, the floor here will kill you - try to avoid it."

Chell paused for a moment to see if there was any more advice that would be forthcoming.  When there wasn't, she went back to the task at hand.  Most likely, the floor would be that same noxious sludge that she had first seen several rooms ago.  

Even if it wasn't deadly, she wouldn't want to touch it anyways.  She couldn't smell anything from this room, but there were large windows that looked out to another room.

She decided to start from the left and work her way across.  As she headed that way, Chell saw an information board to her left, next to the wall in front of her.

This board had four squares lit up, the last three on the first row, and the fourth on the second row.  It made a 'T' shape of sorts.  The top three were the Pellet smacking the stick figure in the face, the Pellet falling into a collector, and the stick figure drowning and being electrocuted in water.  The one on the bottom row was the marked out figure drinking from a water fountain.

There wouldn't be anything that she hadn't seen before here.

She continued on her way to the leftmost window.  Pausing before it, she looked out into the other room.

The concrete wall directly in front of her had a section that extended out towards the middle.  The very top part consisted of metal; it seemed to run around what she could see of the entire room.  

Below the metal was something that looked like a square door.  It was white and grey and had an outline of a blue triangle pointing downwards on the bottom.

Underneath the door was an orange portal.  Out in front of it, in what looked to be the middle of the room was a metal platform.  She couldn't get a look at it from here, though.

The left wall of the other room had another square door, though this one had an exit sign above it.  

Below the door was a Pellet catcher.  She didn't see or hear a Pellet bouncing around at the moment, but there was no telling where it could be.

The floor of the other room did appear to be the deadly muck, but the window had a slight grey tint, so she wasn't able to see it clearly.

Chell then made her way to the middle window to see the vantage from there.

The middle window was up a couple of small stairs and extended out towards the second room.  There were three sections to this window, the left and right parts were at a slight angle, while the middle part was flat.

Out these windows, Chell got a better look at the metal platform in the middle of the room.  On it appeared to be another portal gun; however, this one shot the orange portals.  It would fire a portal, rotate, and shoot another one.  It didn't fire a portal to the left wall, because it was in line with the Pellet collector.  She couldn't see the portal that it fired to the section of wall below her.

Immediately to the right of the portal gun's platform was a glass floor that looked to be an Unstationary Scaffold.  It looked like it went to the right, directly at the point where a portal would be fired.

The back right wall of the second room had a window that showed a third room.  Chell couldn't see much of it; except that its back wall had an observation window and that the right wall had a Pellet-launching dome.

She walked over to the right and last window.  It offered a different view of things she had already seen, there wasn't anything new.

So, how to get down there where all the action was?  Chell turned around; looking at the room she was in.  The only exit was the way she had come in, with the elevator.

Well, the second room had the orange portals, though the two places she could see them being placed had no floor, they just were in the wall.  However, there was the third place somewhere below where she was standing.

She could open up a portal on one of the walls here and watch for a safe place to go.

Chell turned to her left and fired a blue portal, looking into it to see what was out there.

The first thing she noticed was the stench.  The floor indeed was the toxic liquid from before.  Directly in front of her was the metal platform with the portal gun.  Straight across from it was an alcove that was sunken into the wall and had some kind of small stick poking out of the ground.  

The portal rotated to the right and paused, then rotated around again, and fired a portal into the alcove's wall.  The view went blank for a moment, then reappeared.  Now, Chell was looking across from where she had been seeing before.

She stepped through quickly, and the portal vanished a few moments later, as the gun kept rotating and firing.

There wasn't much to see down here that couldn't be seen from up at the windows.  There was a blue dotted power line leading from the stick to the metal door across the way.  The stick was white with blue vertical stripes and had a red button on top of it.

Chell took her left hand off of the portal gun and brought it down on the button.  The button activated and the door across the way opened.  There was a noise like a ticking clock, and then it closed.

It looked like the door lead to the third room; she could see a concrete wall through it.  So, she hit the button again, this time bringing her had back to the gun quickly and lifting it to speedily fire a blue portal through it.

The portal hit the wall and stayed there.  The door slid closed and she could no longer see it.

Chell turned around and waited for the portal gun to fire an orange portal on the wall.  It took several minutes for it to get around to her.  She stood out of the way and watched as the orange portal appeared in the wall.

She stepped through and had a short drop to the ground.  She was on a landing for a staircase.  

There was a strange whirring sound, and a Pellet passed several feet in front of her, bounced off the wall, and back the way it came.

As long as she was careful, the blasted thing wouldn't hit her.

The stairs that were directly in front of her lead to the door she had opened with the button.  There wasn't anything remarkable where it was at, so she looked over to the left, where the other part of the staircase lead to.

The rest of the room was larger, though the only important thing was the Pellet dome on the left wall.

Chell walked down the stairs, staying close to the wall on her right and as far away from the volatile Pellet as possible.

She made her way over to the wall where the Pellet dome was located.  She wasn't thrilled to have to walk underneath it to look out the window, but it was far enough overhead that the Pellet wouldn't come anywhere near to touching her.

Chell walked under the dome and over to the window.  She needed to get the Pellet into the other room and to the collector.

She reviewed what she knew in her mind.  The portal gun in the middle would fire portals on every side of the main room, except the wall with the Pellet catcher.  The Pellet collector shined an orange-red circle of light right on the spot where the orange portal directly across from it would be placed.

So, she'd have to time the Pellet going through a blue portal in this room with the orange portal in the next room when it appeared.  It shouldn't be too difficult.

The orange portal would stay in place for several moments before a new one would appear on the next wall.  There was only one place she could put a blue portal in the room she was in, right at the scorched Pellet impact site across from the dome.

Chell watched out the window, waiting for the orange portal to be placed on the wall in the middle room nearest where she was standing.  It didn't take long for it to appear.

After the portal was where she needed it to be, Chell rapidly turned and fired a blue portal at the wall opposite her, where the Pellet would bounce off of.  

After a moment of travel, the Pellet sailed through the blue portal and out of the orange one in the next room.

The Pellet continued flying through the air, right over the orange portal gun and into the collector.  The collector glowed blue and the Unstationary Scaffold next to the portal gun's perch unlocked and started moving.

Chell watched as the Scaffold made its way towards the wall across from the Pellet collector was, right where an orange portal would show up every few seconds or so.  The Scaffold stayed next to the wall, unmoving.

She turned to her left and fired a blue portal at the wall.  Chell then watched through it, waiting for the portal in front of the Scaffold to show up.

Once it did so, she stepped through and landed safely on the glass platform.  

As soon as her feet touched the Scaffold, it started moving towards the island where the orange portal gun was located.

The trip over to it was short, and she disembarked quickly to stand in front of the second gun.

The guns were too bulky to carry both, what was she going to do?  It'd be handy to control both the blue and orange portals, and there wasn't any foreseeable way out at the moment.

There was a small, round thing on the bottom of her portal gun that looked to be the same size as the circular hole on top of the other gun.  

Out of ideas, Chell linked the two guns together by placing her gun on top of the other and lining up their respective parts.

Both guns glowed for a moment and there was a hum of electricity.  The light faded, and only the top and original gun had a light that was blinking on the top.

Chell unhooked her gun from the other with a click.  It was warm to the touch.

Its data imparted to the other, the orange gun and pedestal sunk into the ground and a stick with a button popped up on the edge of the platform in front of her.

The voice spoke, informing Chell of what had just happened.  "The Device has been modified so that it can now manufacture two linked portals at once.

As part of an optional test protocol, we are pleased to present an amusing fact:  The Device is now more valuable than the organs and combined incomes of everyone in subject hometown here."

Chell frowned slightly at this; the portal gun was that valuable?  Or was that just a statement made to keep her from doing something dumb and breaking it?  They either didn't know or care where her hometown was, so likely they wouldn't know how many people there were and how much they made.  Anyways, if it really was that expensive, why would they trust random test subjects with it?

So, she could now use both portals, that was pretty great.  How would the second one fire, though?  Chell felt the vertical handhold that she used to fire the blue portal, and it was now segmented in half.

Experimenting, Chell first pulled on the top half, a blue portal showed up on the wall to the left of the Pellet container.  Then, she tugged on the bottom part, and the orange portal appeared to the right of the collector.  

It wasn't hard to control, and she only had to move her hand slightly to control it either way.

Now, to get to the exit.

There was a sliding door in the wall above the Pellet container that had an exit sign above it.  Chell reached out her hand and pressed the button in front of her, and the door opened, activating a ticking noise that stopped with a buzzer when the door closed.

She pushed the button again, this time, when the door was open; she placed a portal on the wall inside of it.

Turning around, she put another portal on the wall where the Scaffold was currently headed to.  It paused there for a moment, then came back.

Once it was resting at the island, Chell stepped on the Scaffold and rode it to the wall with the portal.  When she reached it, she stepped through the portal and into the small room behind the door.

The first thing she saw in this new room was the sliding door in front of her.  To her right was a wall with an observation window.  To the left was the Grid and elevator.

Chell walked the short distance to the Grid, making her way through it and onto the elevator.  The doors shut and it started its journey to the next chamber.


	13. Chamber 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the thirteenth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the thirteenth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator doors opened a few moments later into a room that was made mostly out of metal.  The hallway leading to the room had concrete on the upper parts of the walls and the ceiling.

Directly across from Chell, on the metal wall, was a lit up square with one dot.  So, this test would have multiple parts.

As Chell made her way through the hallway to the main room, the voice spoke again.  The first part was slightly garbled, confused, and had a little bit of static, but it sounded like, "Get ready to fling yourself."  There was a pause, then the voice continued, "F...Fling into spa..." and cut off into static.

She waited for a moment, but the voice didn't continue or elaborate.  These glitches were getting annoying.  Did whoever was watching know that there were errors going on?  The entire place looked slightly grubby and wore down; did that go for the electronics as well?

Chell shook her head slightly and continued walking.  On the wall to her right, an information board lit up.  There were four squares highlighted, and they were all ones she was familiar with.  Two of the four were on the top row, and the other two were on the bottom.

The two squares on the top row were the first and second ones, the one showing a cube falling from a cylinder and the one with a cube falling on a stick figure's head.

The bottom two squares were the first and second ones of the second row, they were of the stick figure jumping into a portal below a ledge and flying out of a portal above its location.

So, she was going to have to leap down into portals and activate something with a cube.  It shouldn't be too bad.

Chell turned to her left and continued into the main room.

The first part opened up into a metal section of room that ended into a ledge on the right.  Up against the wall straight ahead and down past the ledge was a concrete staircase.

She walked over to the ledge and looked down.  The floor down below was made entirely out of concrete, except for the grillwork around the pillars holding up the stairs and a grillwork border around the floor.

That's where she was going to jump down into, but where was she going to come out?

The area directly above her was a metal ceiling.  But, right over the pit was a section of concrete wall that was sticking out.

Now that she found her targets, Chell placed one portal at the bottom of the pit and another on the concrete section above.

Chell took in a deep breath.  It was a bit of a distance down to the portal, if she missed, it'd be pretty painful.  In order to pop out the way she wanted to, she was going to have to skydive jump with her body parallel to the portal.

Looking down, she jumped off the ledge and aligned her body to how she wanted to enter it.  Once through, Chell popped out of the higher portal and was sent flying over to a metal ledge.

Once she landed on the ledge, Chell stumbled slightly and put her hands out against the wall in front of her to stable her footing.

Right in front of her was a lighted square with two dots.  Above her was another metal ceiling.

As she walked out from underneath it, Chell saw that above her was another concrete section sticking out of the wall, this time further than the one below it.

She placed a portal on the higher concrete wall, then walked out to the edge of the ledge and looked down.  

It was an even greater distance to the portal now.  Though, there wasn't any sense in delaying, the sooner she got this done, the sooner she could have cake.

The good news was that that upper section looked to be the highest place she'd have to come out of, hopefully.  There was a metal ledge right above the concrete wall.

The portal at the bottom of the pit looked rather small from up here.  She took in another deep breath and leapt off, adjusting herself to fall front first through the portal.

She landed with a bump on a small ledge.  Right in front of where she stood was a red button on the ground.  On the wall in front of her was a section of concrete.  Off to the side, below the concrete span was a white glowing square with three dots.

Moments after Chell landed, the middle part of the concrete section extended out from the wall and tilted upwards at a steep angle.

Chell turned to follow where the angle was going and saw behind her another metal ledge above the concrete wall she had just been flung out of.

She could only see three things on the ledge, an observation window on the left wall, a cube-dispensing cylinder on the ceiling next to it, and the exit door on the right wall.

Chell turned around and placed a portal on the angled slab of concrete, then turned around to address the pit.

From her perch, the only thing she could see below her was the second ledge.  Chell easily hopped down and walked over to the very edge, looking down again once more into the pit.

She had made this jump just moments ago and had been just fine, she could do it again.  Chell leapt off and made sure her body was positioned correctly for entry through the portal.

She passed through the portal safely and flew up out of the angled portal to land on the ledge above with a thwack into the wall.

Chell stumbled backwards, shaking her head to clear it.  After a moment, her headache went away.  She rubbed her face with her left hand, then brought it back to run through her hair.

That wasn't her fault, she had jumped through right, the wall had just been too close for the jump, or the angle of the concrete was off.  If it was less steep, she wouldn't have smacked into the wall.

The piece of wall that she had unceremoniously gotten quite close with a glowing square with four dots on it.

Stepping back, Chell looked to her left and saw the cube on the ground.  How was she going to transport it over the gap?

she walked over to the edge and looked down.  Below was the ledge she had just come from, but it was a distance across the pit.  However, it looked like if she could jump far enough out, she'd be able to easily hit the ledge with room to spare.

Chell backed up and went to get the cube.  She flicked the button, and the portal gun lifted it in the air.

She went to stand with her back against the wall, close to her rough landing point, took a deep breath, then ran across the ledge.  Right at the very end, Chell launched herself up and out over the gap.

Chell landed with a few feet to spare, close to the button.  She took the last few steps towards it and hit the button again to drop the cube down onto the giant floor button.

The red button on the floor was activated by the weight up the cube.  It lit up, and so did the power path to the exit door.

She turned around and walked over to the edge, jumping down to the next one.  She'd have to make this fall one last time.

Chell rested for a moment, catching her breath and preparing for the final jump to the portal in the pit below.

Once she was ready, she stood on the edge, looking down.  With a jump, she started her descent.  Chell placed herself into the skydiving-like position she had used before and readied herself for impact.  She was probably going to hit the wall again.

She zoomed through the floor portal and out of the one on the angled concrete.  

As she arced through the air, close to her destination, the voice spoke in a monotone, "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."  Then, there was a sound of static and the lights flickered.

After that, Chell hit the wall again.  This time, she was prepared for it and had braced herself, so it hadn't hurt that badly.  

She had a slight headache, though, but it went away in moments.

Chell exhaled her breath in a huff.  The voice could go 'Whee' all she wanted, but she wasn't the one that was being flung into walls.

She shook her head and turned to go to the exit door on her right.

The hallway beyond that lead to the exit Grid and elevator was short, so it took very little time to pass through and go into the elevator.

The doors closed and the elevator shook as it went to the next test.  Hopefully this one wouldn't involve tossing her into walls.


	14. Chamber 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the fourteenth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the fourteenth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

It wasn't long until the elevator stopped and the doors opened.  Chell could see a little of the room beyond, it was concrete grey with a window and a blue dotted power line.

She stepped out of the elevator and down the short hallway that lead to the room.

As soon as she entered the area, the voice spoke to her, "Now that you are in control of both portals, this next test could take a very, VERY, long time.

If you become light headed from thirst, feel free to pass out.  An intubation associate will be dispatched to revive you with peptic salve and adrenaline."

Chell had an odd expression on her face as she processed this.  She hadn't thought about being thirsty, but now that the voice had mentioned it, Chell realized that she was.  Passing out wasn't an option, though.  She was going to do this right.  

Besides, she hadn't seen anyone around, and the place was a bit dingy, so there may not be any of the associates around.  Chell was beginning to suspect that the voice was just an old recording, mainly because of all the strange malfunctions that prevented her from speaking correctly.

But, how did she get here, then?  And if the voice really was just an old recording, that meant that there was no cake, nor would there be any drinks.  But, maybe the last chamber would lead out of this place, and she could go out and get her own lunch.

Things didn't make sense in this place, but there was no purpose in standing around and thinking about them.  Whether or not people were still in this place was irrelevant.  There were people in here at one point, and that meant there was a door somewhere out of here, she just had to find it.

If there was a party with cake and refreshments at the end, then all the better.  But, if there wasn't, then all Chell wanted was an exit door.

There weren't that many tests left, she was over halfway there, so it wouldn't be much longer until the end.

First, she needed to get her mind back on this test.

To her right, she heard the hum of an information board, so she gave it a look.  

Only the three middle squares on the top row were highlighted.  These were the cube falling on a stick figure's head, the Pellet smashing a stick figure in the face, and the catcher for the Pellet.  It was slightly odd that there was a cube falling warning, but no warning for a cube dispenser.

Chell turned to her left.  On the wall in front of her, and across from the elevator was a medium-sized window.  Above the window was a grillwork platform that ran across the wall and down the right side wall.

On top of the platform in front of her was a closed door.  On top of the right side platform was a cube.

In the floor, next to where she was standing, was a red button.  So, she'd have to use the cube to open the door.  Nothing hard about that.

She went to the window so that she could see what was in store for her in the next room.

Chell couldn't see the entire room, but she got the gist of the idea of it.  Straight across the way was an exit door connected to what she assumed was two buttons.  She couldn't see the first button, but there appeared to be a power line going to something off to the left.  

Behind the button she couldn't see, there was a platform with a button on it.  Behind that was a Pellet dispensing dome.  In the middle of the floor was a Pellet catcher pointing upwards.  And to the right seemed to be an Unstationary Scaffold that was apparently activated by a Pellet landing in the collector.

Most of the walls and ceiling around the Scaffold were metal, but there was one strip of concrete above the middle of the Scaffold's path.

However, from where she was standing, she didn't see any cubes.  They must be off to the side.

She turned her attention back to the chamber she was in.  

The metal platform was too high to get up onto on her own, but most of the length of it was surrounded by concrete, so all she had to do was place a portal up there.

Chell fired a portal onto the wall behind the cube on the left wall, then turned to her right and placed a portal on the wall at ground level.  She walked over to the second portal and stuck the portal gun through.  The cube was close enough that she could just lift it with a touch of a button.

Once the cube was in the air, Chell backed out, moving it clear of the portal, then turned around.  It was only a few steps to the button on the ground.  Once the cube was in position, she pressed the button on the gun again and the cube fell to land on the floor button.

The upper door opened, so Chell turned to go back through the portal.  This time she went all the way in and found herself standing on the upper metal ledge.  She walked over to the door and looked out to get a better view of the main room.

The only different thing she was able to see was the other button on a higher platform to the left and the one cube that was resting on the Unstationary Scaffold.  So, making sure the floor below was clear, Chell hopped down out the door and to the floor.  

The fall was a little higher than most of the jumps she had made before, but she landed safely with a slight bouncing from the knee replacement springs.

She glanced around the room again; there was only the one cube, but two buttons.  Well, she'd figure out how to take care of that once she got to that.

Chell couldn't get onto the Unstationary Scaffold, it was too high, and the walls around where the platform currently was was made out of the metal that would not allow a portal.  But, there was that one section of ceiling that was concrete, so once the platform got moving, she could reach it that way.

On the wall behind her and to the left of where she was standing, was the impact point where the Pellet would bounce against.  That would be where she needed to place the first portal.

That point found, Chell looked over at the Pellet collector.  On the ceiling above it, it shone a red light, indicating where a portal should be placed if you wanted to line it up with the catcher.

She first placed a portal above the collector, this way the Pellet wouldn't be bouncing about who knows where, it'd go directly into where it needed to go.

Once the portal was in position, Chell turned and looked back at the wall where the Pellet bounced again.  She fired a portal at its impact point and waited.  

After a few moments, the Pellet went whizzing past, flying through the portal and out of the other, to land in the collector.

As soon as it was in place, the Unstationary Scaffold started moving.

Chell then created a portal closer to the ground on the wall near where the Pellet had been bouncing off.

She shifted to her left and placed a portal on the concrete ceiling above the Scaffold.  Chell looked back to the first portal she had made and watched, waiting for the Scaffold to make its way back.

Once it came into sight, she walked through the portal and found herself falling face first towards the Scaffold.  Chell landed with a thud on top of the cube.  Her impact had knocked the air out of her, so she took a moment to regain her breath.  Chell's chest also hurt from her rough landing, but the pain went away shortly.

She picked herself up off of the cube and regained her footing.  That hadn't been fun, but there hadn't been an easier way to do it, unless she put the portal on the ground and stepped through it there, but it would have been harder to see when she was supposed to go through.

Chell used the portal gun to pick up the cube, then hopped off the Scaffold with it.

Once on the ground, she looked around.  Which button should she put it on?  When she looked at the ceiling, she saw that there were lighted squares above each button.  The one closest to the left had a single dot, while the one on the right had two dots.

Chell placed the cube on the ground so that she could fire the portals where she needed them.

She aimed a portal right on the lighted indicator above the button.  Once it was in place, she created a second portal below the cube.

The cube fell and landed on the button, causing the square to the right of the door to light up with a check mark.

Now to activate the other button.  

If the cube was heavy enough to activate it, then certainly she would be able to.  It looked like the button had a good vantage point of the door, so if there was a concrete wall behind it, she could put a portal there, then use one in here to get to the exit.

First, she placed a portal on the indicator light above the button.  Next, she put a portal on the ground next to where she was standing.

Looking down, she could see the button.  It wasn't in the middle of the portal, but she should be able to jump on it without a problem.

Chell hopped through the portal feet-first and landed on top of the button, it activating under her weight.

She turned around, making sure to stay on the button, and looked towards the door.  Sure enough, it was open and had a concrete wall on the other side.

Chell fired a portal onto the wall past the door, then aimed another portal on the wall to the left of the door, under the Pellet dispenser.

She could see the other room through the portal in the main chamber, so she jumped off of the platform, the door closing immediately after her feet left the button.

She walked to the portal on the wall and passed through, ending up on the other side of the door.

Once she was completely inside the room, the voice spoke to her again, "As part of a previously mentioned required test protocol, we can no longer lie to you.  When the testing is over, you will be missed."

When the voice said 'missed', her tone was different, a bit higher.  It sounded out of place.  Well, it didn't matter if she was missed or not, she hadn't even met the person behind the voice, if there really was someone there.

Chell looked to her right and saw a short hallway that lead to the Grid and elevator.  She walked through the Grid and onto the elevator.  Once she had turned around, she watched the doors as they closed.


	15. Chamber 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the fifteenth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the fifteenth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator hummed and shook as it made its way to the next chamber.  The doors opened and Chell looked out to scope the test.

In front of the elevator was a small concrete hallway that lead out into a metal chamber.  From here, Chell couldn't see how big it was, but she could see a raised platform in front of a hole in the wall that was spanned by a Grid.  That must be the exit. 

She walked down the hallway, only pausing to take a look at the information board that flickered to life when she approached it.

There were a total of seven squares highlighted, the last four on the top row and the first two and the fourth one on the bottom.

There wasn't going to be anything she hadn't seen before on this test.  Like the previous one, there was no cube dispenser, only a warning for falling cubes.  Unlike the other one, though, the deadly, and smelly, liquid was going to be somewhere.  She couldn't smell it at the moment, but that didn't mean anything, it was going to be in a different area.

Chell turned to her right and continued out of the hallway.  When she got to the end of it, the voice addressed her, "All subjects intending to handle high-energy gamma leaking portal technology must be informed that they MAY be informed of applicable regulatory compliance issues.

No further compliance information is required or will be provided, and you are an excellent test subject."

Chell eyed the portal gun warily.  Gamma leaking?  That didn't sound good.  This warning should have been given earlier, not after she had been wandering in and out of portals all this time.  

And the warning was useless, anyways.  There was nothing informative about it, except that the portals were gamma leaking, and she wasn't even sure exactly what that meant.  She thought it had something to do with radiation, but she couldn't be certain.  Either way, it probably wasn't pleasant.

Well, it was too late now.  It was too late ages ago.  The only way out of here was to complete the tests, using the possibly dangerous portals.  They hadn't killed her yet, so maybe there wasn't anything to worry about after all.  The portals were certainly less dangerous than the noxious liquid that supposedly killed you on contact, but Chell didn't plan on testing if the warnings were true.

Back to the test.  The sooner she was done, the sooner she could stop dealing with the portals and all this other mess and have cake.

In front of her was the exit, but the platform in front of it was too high to reach.  It'd probably lower when she had completed the test.

Chell looked to her right.  Most of the room was made out of metal, except the floor, which was concrete.  The room extended down until it hit a metal wall with a door in it.  Several feet in front of the door was a red button on the ground connected to it by a blue power line. 

Chell walked down the hallway and stood on the button.  Unfortunately, the room behind it was completely made of metal, so she couldn't just use a portal to get through.

She then turned to her left.  There had to be a cube somewhere that direction.

Several feet from where she was standing, the metal walls gave way to concrete.  Close to the same distance away as the door to the right was what appeared to be a pit with a wall extending above it to make a second floor.

On the ledge above the pit was a Pellet collector on the floor, shining an orange-red light onto the ceiling.

Chell didn't see or hear any Pellets bouncing around, so she placed a portal on the wall behind the collector, to the right of it.

Next, she walked down the hallway, past the metal, to get to the concrete section of walls.  Once she was in front of a section of concrete, Chell shot a portal onto the wall and walked through it.

As she passed through and stood on the second floor, Chell heard a whirring noise, followed by clacking, and another section of floor appeared on the very edge, where the pit was.

Curious, Chell walked over to see what it was.  It was a series of stairs.  Well, the portals had been quicker, but that would have been nice to know about.

As she looked at the stairs, there was another whir and clacking, as the stairs retracted into the floor, once again making a pit.  That was odd.

She turned to her right, to see what was on this floor.  The back wall of the chamber was concrete, with a single medium-sized observation window.  The rightmost wall was metal and seemed to have some kind of metal ledge sticking out of it.

The wall immediately to her right was obstructing her view of the rest of the room, so she made her way around it to see what she had missed.

There was a section of metal wall that made a solid square obstacle.  On top of it were two ledges also made of metal, and on top of the last one was the cube she needed.

She walked over to investigate.  The metal section was too high to climb up or jump on, and the metal wouldn't support portals, so she'd have to get up there another way.

Chell turned around, back to the grey wall behind her.  She noticed that the concrete ceiling of the area with the Pellet catcher extended partly over into the metal section, giving a line of concrete in which she could put portals on.

Hmmmm, if she combined that with the gap, it might be enough to toss her over to the cube.  It was worth a shot anyways, she didn't have any other ideas at the moment.  There was still the Pellet collector to worry with as well, but she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

Chell placed one portal on the section of concrete closest to the right wall, putting it directly across from where she needed to be.

Then, she walked back over to the ledge and looked down into the pit.  She fired a portal onto the ground below her, then leapt down, aligning her body so that she'd end up going out the second portal with her feet pointing towards the ground.

Chell zipped through the portal and out the other, landing safely on the ledge under the one where the cube was resting.  She used the portal gun to lift the cube up, then jumped off backwards to get off her perch.

She turned around and headed with her prize over to the gap.  As she got close, it hummed to life and changed into a staircase.

Chell made her way down the stairs and across the room to the button.  Once the cube was in place, she dropped it down and activated the door.

Once it was open, she smelled a familiar stench wafting through the air.  The deadly liquid was somewhere this direction.  Great, she couldn't wait.

It took only a few strides to get to the door and pass through to the small metal room beyond.

There was nothing to the left, so she turned to the right and continued down the way.  On the left, was an open hole in the wall, and as she went closer, the smell grew worse.

She turned and walked through the opening and found herself faced with a small platform with walls on three sides.

Only the section to her left was open, and there was a liquid hazard sign lit up on the ground.

Chell cleared the doorway and walked over to the ledge to look out across the disgusting rectangular pool.

The green-ish sludge covered the floor down a hallway that was bordered on all sides with walls, so she couldn't simply walk around it.  In the middle of the slop was a concrete platform held up by a silver pillar.

As she analyzed the situation, platforms on both sides of the middle platform would rise out of the murk, pause for a moment, then go back down with a fetid splash.

At the end of this noxious hallway was safe concrete ground that had another square opening with a room beyond.  As Chell looked across the way, she saw a Pellet bouncing around.

Chell gave a sigh.  She was going to have to cross the dangerous pool the hard way.  Until she saw the Pellet, she had been planning to just use portals to get across safely.  

But, with the Pellet bouncing around, she'd have to use up a portal by placing it above the collector, and then use the other for the Pellet.

She turned around and headed back through the small hallway and the main chamber.

Since the Pellet collector had a light above it, she could stand in the doorway and aim a portal at the exact place she needed, without having to walk all the way back down.

Once the portal was where she needed it to be, Chell reversed herself and went back to the treacherous room.

Chell stood close to the ledge, waiting for the first moving platform to rise up in front of her.  As soon as it got up to her, she jumped on, then immediately leapt to the solid middle platform.

So far, so good, halfway there.  It was only a moment before the other platform rose up.  She did the same thing as before, two swift jumps, and she was all the way across.

Only one thing left to do.  Chell looked through the open hole in the wall.

The room beyond was small, it had a Pellet dispenser on the right, and a few feet in front of that was the wall where the Pellet bounced off of.  

The entire thing was made of concrete, so Chell shot another portal at the Pellet's impact site.  

It only took a few seconds for the Pellet to make its way through the portal and into the collector.

Once the Pellet was in place, the voice addressed her, "Very, very good.  A complimentary victory lift has been activated in the main chamber."

That was great news, and meant that she could use portals to bypass the platforms and quickly get across the vile hallway.

Chell turned and went out the doorway.  She shot a portal on the other side of the deadly room.  

When it was where she wanted, Chell looked to her left and placed a portal on the nearby wall.

She stepped through and was immediately on the other side.

From there, she turned and went back through the small metal hallway and into the main chamber.

It took a couple of minutes to get there and over to the lift.

The lift was in the floor now, so Chell stepped on and rode it to her destination.

She stepped off and walked down the short metal hallway, going through the Grid and into the elevator.

The elevator's doors closed and it activated, taking her to the next test.


	16. Chamber 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the sixteenth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the sixteenth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator ride was short.  Once it stopped moving, the doors opened and Chell could see into the next test chamber.

Straight ahead was a short hallway that turned to the left.  At the turn of the hallway, straight in front of her, was an unlit information board.

Chell exited the elevator and made her way to the board.  When it activated, the voice spoke, "The Enrichment Center is committed to the well being of all participants.  Cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test.  Thank you for helping us help you help us all."

This was an interesting development.  The cake Chell had already heard about, but the grief counseling was new.  What purpose was grief counseling?  There wasn't anybody else here, not that she had seen.  If there was no one to lose, there would be nobody to grieve over.  Maybe she'd find out the answer later, though, it wasn't something she was looking forward to.

Chell turned her attention back to the information board.  The warnings were the same for the previous chamber, except that this one didn't have any cubes.  Well, that'd make things simpler.

She walked around the corner and into the main chamber to see what this test would consist of.

On the ground near the entrance were two lit squares, they were the ones showing the stick figure jumping in one lower portal and flying out a higher one.

The other side of the room had an exit door.

However, in between was a glass wall with several large Grids that extended to the ceiling.  On the walls on both sides of the barrier in the middle had several feet of metal covering, while the rest of the room was concrete.

Chell walked over to the glass barrier to get a better look at what was on the other side.  She couldn't see anything more, just that there was a concrete wall on the other side of the exit door, so there would be more to the test.

How to get across the barrier, though?  She couldn't shoot portals through the glass or Grid, so something on this side would have to help her.

She turned around and saw that high above where she had entered, two of the concrete panels close to the ceiling were extended outwards.  That, combined with the squares on the ground meant that she was going to have to fling herself.

But, usually, that meant jumping into a gap to build up momentum.  There were no gaps here.

Well, she'd see how it went.  She fired a portal onto the piece of wall that was sticking out, then planned where she'd place the other.

She needed a way to see where she was going, but she also needed to land on her feet to use the springs to cushion the fall.  Probably the best way to do it was to put a portal on the wall and walk through normally.

So, on the nearest piece of concrete to her left, Chell placed a portal, then walked over to it.  She looked into the gateway and saw the Grid some distance in front of her.  Chell doubted she'd make it, but walked through anyways, to see what would happen.

She didn't make it very far, landing close to the portal she had entered.  The fall had been quite a distance, but the springs absorbed the landing.  Besides, she hadn't been going all that fast anyways.

What was she missing?  There wasn't anything else in the room she could use, she had everything that was necessary, she just had to put the pieces together.

She had a little momentum when going through and falling from the upper part of the chamber.  How could she build that up even more?

When she flung herself before, there had been a lower portal she had jumped into and exited out the upper one, just like the pictures showed.

What if she did the same thing, but come out the top portal first, then make a new portal at her landing site?  If she was right, that'd have the same effect as leaping down into a pit to build a greater fall.

Only one thing to do, and that was to try it.  Chell walked the few steps it took to get to the portal on ground level and walked through it.

She came out of the top portal and was falling fast, feet first to the ground.  Chell looked down and shot a portal to the ground below where she thought she was falling to.  She hoped she got this right.

Chell fell into the portal and came back out the higher one.  This time, she flew easily feet first through the Grid.  She hit the floor on her back and slid a few feet into the doorway from her momentum.

She sat up and stayed there for a moment, recovering, then stood up, brushing herself off slightly.

That hadn't been too bad at all.  She was feeling pretty good about figuring out how to cross through the Grid.  Though, that second fling's landing had been a bit on the rough side.

Chell turned around to look back at where she had come from; she had traveled quite a distance.  The portals she had placed were gone.  Apparently, when she passed through the Grid, it reset them, that must be why the gun shook every time she walked through a Grid.  She'd have to remember that for later, it could come in handy.

She turned back around and walked through the hallway in front of her; it turned to the left and into another chamber.

The first thing she was aware of was a Pellet bouncing back and forth on the other side of the chamber across from where she was.

The hallway had let out near another exit sign, but the way out was inaccessible, there was a raised lift platform blocking the doorway.  She'd have to lower it to leave.

Chell walked out into the chamber, nothing much of interest was along the wall where the exit was.  Around the entire room, the lower half of the walls was made of metal.

However, across from the exit, the other half of the room was intriguing.  

The other side of the room was split in half by a metal wall.

The first section consisted of a grid crossing the opening.  Behind the grid was a Pellet collector on the ground that connected to the lift.

The second section was also covered by a grid, this part of the room held the Pellet dispenser on the top of the back wall.

So, she had to get the Pellet where it needed to be, but couldn't shoot any portals from here into the other part of the room, because of the grids.

Chell knew the first step was to place a portal at the Pellet's impact site, but she didn't want to place portals around and have that thing bouncing around who knows where.  Chell really, really didn't want to be vaporized by the Pellet.

The collector was on the ground, so she'd have to place a portal above it to get the Pellet to go inside.  She could only do that from within the section, though.

So, this would have to be in two parts, and she'd just have to hope that the Pellet didn't vanish before she placed the second set of portals.  It probably wouldn't, they seemed to have a few good bounces in them, and Chell planned on doing this quickly, with a minimum of bouncing.  She didn't want it to go off somewhere unpredictable with a misaimed portal.

First she placed a portal on the wall in front of the section with the collector.  Next, Chell turned and fired a portal at the wall where the Pellet was bouncing against.

On the Pellet's next bounce, it flew through the portal and out the other one, it kept going until it hit the back wall of the section with the collector and went back through the portal.

Chell'd have to time this right to get the Pellet where she wanted.  She stood next to the Grid, waiting for the Pellet to exit the portal nearby.  When it did so, she walked through the Grid to stand close to the collector.  As soon as she passed through the Grid, all the portals vanished.

The Pellet bounced against the wall, then flew back to where the portal it had exited had been.  Since it had vanished, the Pellet just bounced off and was coming back towards Chell's direction.

She'd have to do this quickly, just in case it was going to vanish soon.  Chell fired a portal at the wall where the Pellet would impact, then at the ceiling, where the orange light told where exactly the collector was.

The Pellet soared through the portals, going into the collector with a burst of electricity.  With a hum, the lift behind her lowered to the ground.

Chell turned around and walked over to the lift.  Once she was completely aboard, it started up, bringing her to the next section of the challenge.

The first thing she saw was a grey wall a few feet in front of her.  The floor turned to the right down a medium-length hallway that ended in a square open doorway.

What little she could see of the next room seemed to consist of a mostly metal floor and a barrier similar to the one in the first room.

Chell walked down the hallway and saw that her assumptions about the room were correct, but there were a few more details that she hadn't been able to see that had now become clear.

The room was split in half by a barrier formed with a glass wall and several grids above it, like in the first room.  However, there were several key differences.

The first half of the room was made nearly entirely out of metal, only a small area in front of the glass was concrete.  Chell turned around to check and make sure that there was a point she could jump out of on the wall behind her, and found that the wall was made entirely of concrete, so that part would work.

What she had done in the previous room wouldn't fit this one, with the metal floor; she couldn't clear it in one jump.

Over to the left, she discovered another difference.  There were two square openings in the wall, one at ground floor and another diagonal to the right of it.  Through the opening on the floor, Chell could see a metal staircase that went upwards, had a landing, then went to the right.

She walked up the stairs, following them until she reached a pit.  So, that was where she was going to jump from.  Hopefully, it'd be enough to either get her over the wall or at least to the concrete where she could fire another portal from and launch herself further.

Now that she knew what she needed to do, Chell went down the stairs and back to the main room, then walked to the glass wall to see what she'd be flinging herself into.

On the left wall, there was a Pellet dome and a Pellet catcher next to each other.  The catcher was to the left of the dome.  That was interesting; she hadn't seen the two so close before.

Over to the right was a different story.  There was another glass barrier with Grids above it, so she was going to have to do the same thing in that side of the room and throw herself over with portals.  Great.

Behind the barrier were two slanted pieces of wall that pointed in opposite directions.  The Pellet was aimed at one such slant, it would bounce off from it and hit the wall, then come back, bounce again off the slant and as it reached the Grid, it would explode.  Getting the Pellet to the collector was going to be tricky, but first, she had to get over there.  Maybe there was something else she was missing.

Chell turned around to start back towards the opening.  First, she fired a portal at the slightly extended point in the concrete wall that was high above where she had first come into the room.

She then made her way back and walked up the stairs again.  She looked down into the pit, preparing herself for her flight to come.

Hopefully, when she flung herself over the barrier, she wasn't going to put herself in the Pellet's path.  This was the only way over, so it was a risk she was going to have to take.

Chell fired a portal onto the floor of the pit.  She'd need to see the floor for when she possibly had to place another portal to get over the barrier, so she decided to dive in face first.  The impact was probably going to hurt, but she could probably roll and avoid crushing her face in.

Her dive carried her through the portal and out of the higher one in the other room.  As she fell in an arc, she could tell that the first jump wasn't enough, so when she got close to the ground, she fired another portal, going through it face first as well.

This time she flew all the way across, passing through the barrier.  Once she went through the Grid, Chell tucked her head in and curved her back, when she hit the ground, her upper back took the impact and she went into a somersault.

She rolled over just once and landing in a sitting position.  Her back was a bit sore, but because she had rolled, it had spread it out so it wasn't that bad.  Her pain went away after a few moments.  She also realized that she smelled a familiar nasty stench.  There was some deadly liquid around here somewhere.

Chell found that she was sitting under the Pellet dispenser.  She watched it emit another Pellet and the path it made to the other side of the room.  That Pellet didn't last long, so she'd have to move quickly to get it where she needed.

First, she had to get to that side of the room so she could control where it went.

Well, actually, first, she needed to figure out what it activated.  On her left was an exit door, so she stood up to go see what it lead to.  As she got closer, the smell magnified, so it lead to the disgusting and fatal liquid.

Right at the entrance of the door was a single, unmoving platform.  There was a small rectangle gap in the wall to its left, it looked just enough for the platform to go through.  If Chell looked hard enough, she could see an unlit line for the platform to follow.  Beyond the platform was a hallway that the entire floor was covered in the sludge.  Down the hallway was what looked to be a pillar where the platform would be redirected to the left to continue going.

Since the entire hallway area was concrete, Chell put a portal on the wall down the hallway and on the wall to the left.  She took a few steps to her left and put a portal on the wall there, so she could see if she could see what awaited her.

As she looked through the portal, all she could see was another short hallway that turned to the left.  So, she was going to have to ride the platform down that way.  Since she couldn't see anything else of use, it was time to get back to the puzzle in the room that would activate the platform.

Chell knew she had to fling herself over the wall, so she turned around and looked up at the wall across from the barrier.  Above the Pellet collector was a single, extended piece of concrete wall.  She'd have to fling herself from there.  At least it wasn't above the Pellet dispenser, that'd make it more dangerous.

She placed a portal onto the outstretched piece of concrete, then went back to the portal she had used as a looking hole and walked through.

Chell rushed towards the ground as she fell out of the portal.  Quickly, she pointed the gun below her and before impact, fired a portal onto the ground.  Flying through, she popped out of the higher portal with her feet coming out first.  She sailed through the Grid and landed on her back on the other side.

She took a minute's breather as the pain from the landing went away, then she got up to her feet and checked the situation out.

There were two burn marks on the slanted piece of wall, apparently from when it hit it going in and when it bounced back off of it.  So, the angle changed slightly when it bounced.

The wall where it bounced off had a burn mark on the second-to-last section of concrete wall.

On the other slanted wall, she could see the orange light from the collector.  If she bounced it off just right, it'd go in the collector nicely.

If she put a portal on the second-to-last concrete section on the other side, it'd bounce off at the same angle as it did on this side, thus, placing it into the catcher.

Chell first put a portal where the Pellet bounced off the left wall, then put a second one on the equivalent spot on the right side and waited for the Pellet to be dispensed.

The Pellet whizzed past, bounced off the angled concrete, and into the portal on the left wall.  It then popped out of the portal on the right wall, bounced off the slanted section of wall and sailed towards the collector.

The collector took in the Pellet with a blue glow.

Now to get back over and ride the platform in the exit hallway.

There wasn't an extended piece of concrete close to the ceiling, but that shouldn't be a problem.  Chell just placed a portal on a flat section of the wall close to the right wall.  Next, she turned to her right and put a portal on ground level.  Once it was in place, she easily walked through it.

She popped out of the upper portal, falling with her feet pointing to the ground.  Before she hit, Chell fired a portal below and fell through it.

Flying through feet first, Chell came out of the upper portal and made it through the Grid.  She landed on her back with a thud.  

She rested for a moment, the pain going away after a few seconds, then stood up.  She walked over to the exit hallway to get out of here.

To her surprise, the platform was going through the small rectangle opening and there was another platform coming this way.  They weren't going to make this easy on her, were they?  She was going to have to use portals to get to the platforms, then use another portal to get further.  Depending on how long the hallway was, this could take quite a while.

With a sigh, Chell placed a portal on the left wall where she had taken a peek from before, then placed another one to her left on the wall in the room, so she could look out and wait for a platform.

Once a platform was in front of her, she stepped onto it quickly and fired a portal at the wall opposite her and rode the platform back to where she had started.

When it was near the entrance, she jumped off quickly, before it went into the wall.  She walked over to her viewing portal and waited for another platform to come to her.

A platform came close, and she stepped onto it and looked to the right.  There was a room that way, so she rapidly fired a portal onto one of the walls, moments before it was out of view.  She wasn't sure where it had been placed, so she'd take a good look before walking through the one back in the other room.

It took only moments for the platform to come back to the entrance, she rapidly got off and walked to the portal on the wall.

The room seemed harmless enough; she was looking out from the back wall.  To her immediate right was a tall grey wall with some kind of power line leading to it.  Several feet in front of her was a raised platform on a silver pillar.  There was an identical platform and pillar on the other side of the room, close to the front wall.  On the front wall, she could see the deadly hallway she had just come from.  Above it was a raised section of concrete.  In the middle of the ceiling of the room was a Pellet dispenser.  But, she didn't see the Pellet collector, but it had to be somewhere around here.

Since this section of the room appeared safe, Chell walked through to see what this part of the test was all about.

As she entered the room, two things happened.  The platforms simultaneously lowered and the dispenser released a Pellet.

So, the platforms were lifts.  Well, she'd ride this closest one to see what it led to.  She stepped on it and it started going upwards.  After a few moments, it stopped in front of what seemed to be a small room.

Chell stepped off and the lift went back down.  The small room contained a window that looked across the room.  On the wall straight across was an exit sign.  Was it the final one, or would there be more to this test?  She thought she saw a Grid across the gap, but it was hard to tell.  There was a platform in front of it, so it would probably be lowered by the Pellet landing in its collector.

Speaking of the collector, it was in a glass box right in front of where she was looking out.  It was situated on the wall to her right, looking across to the entrance of the room.  In the front of the box were two walls.  How would they be removed?

There was still more to the room, to her right, was a white stick with a red button on it.  To the button's left, there was a lit square on the floor that had two dots on it.  It was the second of an unknown number of steps.  Well, she might as well press it to see what it does.

Chell took her hand off the portal gun and pressed the button.  The second of the barriers in front of the collector came down and there was a ticking noise for several seconds, then a buzzer sounded, and the barrier went back up.

She assumed that the control for the first barrier was on the other side of the room, there was an identical room on that side with a button stick.

So, she was going to have to get the Pellet in position to go into the collector, then she was going to have to activate both buttons in order for it to go all the way through.

First, she needed to see if she had enough time to get to the other side of the room to activate the other door.

Chell hit the button again, then ran to the entrance of the smaller room she was in.  Not wanting to waste time waiting for the lift, she jumped off and hit the ground below.  She dashed across the room, taking care to avoid the Pellet bouncing up and down, then stood on the lift.  It took her up to the other room.  She jumped off and dashed to the button, just as she was going to press it, the buzzer sounded and the door closed.

Well, that was a problem.

Chell sat down to think about this.  She could travel between the rooms quicker if she used portals, but if she got the Pellet in place first, they'd be used for the Pellet to go through.  If she messed up, she could have the Pellet right in her face, and she'd be vaporized.  That wasn't an option.

she needed to see how much time she had with the doors open if she used portals.  She stood up and went to the entrance to this room.  She aimed the portal gun at the section of wall she could see through the entrance to the other button room and fired.

Then she turned around and fired a portal onto the wall behind the button.  She could see the other room's button through the portal, so she'd have quick access to it.

Chell pressed the button, then turned and quickly walked through the portal, hitting the other button once she was close enough.

Both doors were open at the same time for several seconds.  One closed before the other, but there was a good amount of time that she could use.

So, she just had to do this again, then put the Pellet through.  Chell hoped there'd be enough time for that.

She pressed the button and turned to run through the portal.  She appeared in front of the other button and pressed it.  Then, Chell walked to the opening, so she could see where to fire the portals to get the Pellet in place.

Chell first placed a portal on the extended piece of concrete across from the collector.  Then she quickly placed one where the Pellet was going to bounce off the floor.

The Pellet flied through the portal on the ground and out the one on the high part of the wall.  It made it through before either barrier closed and landed in the collector.  

The collector glowed blue, and the voice spoke.  There was no praise for the difficult things she had done, only a useless fact, "Did you know you can donate one or all of your vital organs to the Aperture Science self esteem fun for girls?  It's true!"

How did vital organs give someone else self esteem?  Anyways, if they were vital organs, she was pretty sure she didn't want to give them up.  She wasn't ready to die yet, and giving up organs for someone she probably didn't know seemed like a dumb way to die.  If it was somebody she knew that was dying, maybe she'd be willing to give them up.  But she'd cross that bridge when she came to it, there wasn't anybody she knew, and the place seemed deserted anyways.  It was probably just another automated message.  

Though, it was odd that the early, simple tests garnered praise when complete, but this one, which had taken quite a while and many, many steps had nothing to encourage you to keep going.

Not that she was going to give up, mind you.  And the lack of praise wasn't going to diminish her pride in herself for completing this extensive test.

But, what would the next test bring?  What could be more difficult than this?

Well, she was going to find out.  Only a few more tests until she got her much-deserved cake.  She was getting pretty hungry now, so she was looking forward to the victory celebration.

Time to get out of here and head to the next test.  She walked back to the entrance and jumped down to the ground.

The exit lift was on the wall to her left, next to the room she had just leapt out of.  It only took a few strides to get to the lift.

Once she stepped aboard, it raised upwards to the small cubby that held a Grid and the elevator.  

Chell walked off of the lift and made her way through the grid and onto the elevator.

She sat with her back to the back wall of the elevator.  She wanted a short rest before starting the next chamber.

The doors to the elevator closed and the elevator went to the next destination.


	17. Chamber 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the seventeenth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the [NUMBER] chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.
> 
> I'm afraid that the story grinds to a halt to talk about the Ratman den in this level. There's so much detail in it that expands on things, however, it does sort of bog things down.
> 
> Also, it seems indicated by the Lab Rat comic that Chell never takes any bullets (at least that Ratman can see) from the turrets. However, I don't know how to accomplish this fully in-game, so Chell got shot a few times.
> 
> The rapid healing is from the game itself, you can die, but if you're hit, you recover quickly afterwards. I've kept it in the novelization because it makes things interesting.

Chell sat in the floor for a few minutes after the elevator doors open.  Her eyes were closed, she didn't want to think about what was next, just for a short period of time, she just wanted to relax and recover.

After a while, she opened her eyes and got to her feet.  It was time to get serious.  She felt a bit refreshed after her break, so she'd be sharper for the more difficult tasks ahead.

She looked out to see what she could find out about this test.

The elevator let out to an enclosed grey hallway.  At the very end was a dark, unactivated information board.  On the left wall, close to the board, was a closed door.

Maybe it'd open once she got close, and besides, she wanted to see what the information board had to say.

Chell walked down the hallway, when she got close to the door, the voice spoke, in an odd-sounding tone, "Due to mandatory scheduled maintenance, the appropriate chamber for this testing sequence is currently unavailable.  It has been replaced with a live-fire course designed for military androids.  The Enrichment Center apologizes for the inconvenience and wishes you the best of luck."

As soon as the voice was done speaking, the door opened.

A LIVE-FIRE course for ANDROIDS?  This was insane!  The portal gun wasn't designed for combat; you couldn't just shoot somebody with it.  She wasn't trained in fighting, either.  Would this be the end of the road for her?  No, she'd get through this and beat it.

The information board only had three squares highlighted.  The first two on the top row were lit, the ones featuring the cubes.  The other square was a new one; it was the middle square in the bottom row.  This square showed a stick figure being shot by lasers from an odd looking thing.  Just great.  Lasers.  Exactly what she wanted to encounter.

Chell sighed and ran a hand through her hair.  This wasn't going to be a fun test.  She thought the last one was bad, just for the fact that it was so long and kind of tricky.  This one was out and out going to be fatal.

Well, she should get to facing the firing squad; this test wasn't going to complete itself.  No matter how bad it was, she had come too far to just turn back now.  Only a few more chambers until the end, that's it.  Though, if they progressively got worse, her chances of survival would start dwindling.

She turned and looked through the doorway.  The room was made of concrete with a window across from her.  Through the window, Chell could see two odd white ovals on legs.  Each of the ovals had a red laser shooting out from it to the right.

In the room Chell was about to enter, she saw to the left one metal leg.  One of the laser ovals was in there, but she didn't see the red beam of light.  It must be facing another direction, so it should be safe to enter the room.

Chell walked forward into the room, there was a burst of sound that kept repeating.  It took her a moment to find the source.  There was a room past the room behind the window.  This room was also covered by a window that was now scored with cracks and more kept appearing.  Chell walked closer to try and get a better idea of what it was.

As she got close to the window, she heard a voice say, "Deploying."  All of a sudden, there was a second, closer blast of sound.  The glass in front of her was cracking, but seemed to hold.

Chell peered through the fractured window; it looked like one of the ovals was shooting at her.  She hadn't been in front of its laser, though.  And that other one, it was quite a distance away.  It seemed as if they had a pretty good range and could shoot at more than what it touched with its laser.

There was one good thing about all of this, though.  That was the fact that they didn't fire lasers.  It looked like ordinary bullets.   It wouldn't be any fun to be shot either way, but at least it wasn't some kind of crazy laser thing.  Bullets she could deal with.

She put her hand to one of the areas where the glass had been shot.  She couldn't feel any warmth from the bullets slamming into it, but she could feel it shake slightly under the attack.  The glass seemed sturdy and bulletproof, but she didn't want to test that, so she backed up until it stopped firing.

The gun robot said, "Are you still there?"  Then, she saw it looking around, swinging its laser in several directions.  It appeared to be confused and couldn't find her, even though she had only taken a few steps away from the window.

After several moments of searching, it paused, staring straight ahead.  It spoke one simple phrase, "Target lost."

Chell then turned around to see what she could do about getting out of here.

With her back to the window, there was two points of interest to her right.

One was an exit to the next part of the test.  

The other was one of the killer robots.  From here, it looked like the thing was tall enough to come up to her shoulder.  She had seen what the other ones did to the glass and didn't want to end up like that.

She carefully walked around the robot, staying several feet away at all times.  Maybe she could use the portals to avoid it completely.  As she did so, a robot in the other room started firing again, making noise against the glass.

Ignoring the obnoxious noise, she looked out over the robot in this room's head, trying to see if she could sneak through the hallway with portals.

No such luck.  All Chell could see of the previous room was that it was made of metal.  She was going to have to deal with the robot before she could continue, but how?

Maybe if she dropped it from a portal.  If she placed one below it and one somewhere on the ceiling, it'd fall through.  If the height was enough, it could damage the robot and maybe put it out of commission.

Well, the only thing she could do was try it and hope she didn't get killed.

Chell walked back towards the entrance, as she did so, more of the robots started firing on the glass.  This was getting old; they were making quite a racket.  The quicker she got out of this room, the better.

She found that if she stood in the right corner of the smaller section in front of the door, she'd have a clear view of the robot and be as far away as possible from it.

With a deep breath, she first placed a portal on the ceiling, close to directly above the menacing robot.  Next, she placed a portal below it.

Mayhem instantly erupted.  As soon as the robot fell through the portal, it started firing wildly, yelling "Ow ow ow!"  It flew through both portals twice, then landed sideways on the ground, still shooting.  It stopped as soon as it began, stating an almost-sad "I don't blame you."

Chell waiting a few moments to see if it'd come back to life.  It was silent and there was no laser emitting from it.

She walked over to examine the thing.  There were bullet holes all around the room, mostly on the wall in front of where it landed and fired until it shut down.

The bullets had made craters in the grey walls, in the stuff she had assumed was solid concrete.  She couldn't see the bullets, just a small dark hole surrounded by an impact ring.  These things meant serious business.

However, it looked as if they'd malfunction as soon as they lost their balance.  Could they simply be tipped over to stop them?  She wasn't sure if she wanted to try it, it could be dangerous.  But, she'd keep that fact in mind, in case things came to that.  Who knew what could happen in this place.

Now that the crazy robot was out of the way, she could continue.  Chell turned around and walked to the doorway, first, moving the portal out of her way, and then peeking around to see if there were any more of the things lurking around.

All she could see was that the room was made of metal and that it lead to the right.

Chell pressed her back to the right wall of the small hallway and walked to the corner, peeking around slightly to see if there was a robot down that direction.

The metal gave way to concrete and a small, square room.  There were no robots in the room, but there was a red laser down the middle of it.  There was a doorway on the left wall of this room.

There were two options, there was either a robot down the left hallway with its laser coming through the door or there was a robot to the right, possibly down another hallway.

Either way, it couldn't see her, so she walked cautiously around the corner and to the doorway to see if the robot was in the room.

The laser ended on the right wall, so the robot had to be down the hallway.  That was good to know.

There were pieces of wall on both sides of the square doorway that lead to the robot.  If she used a portal to get on the other side of the laser, perhaps she could find a way around the robot without it finding her.

Chell placed a portal on the right side of the doorway.  Since the room she was in was made out of metal, she stepped forward until she had a clear shot of the left side of the doorway, then fired one on that part of the wall.

She slowly walked towards the portal, taking care to stick close to the wall.  She entered the left portal and came out of the right safely.  The robot hadn't noticed her presence.

Chell turned to look out of the doorway.  There was an alcove out of the robot's laser's range behind the left wall.  It'd be simple to get there.

She fired a portal into the alcove on the wall, next to the corner, and walked back through the portal next to her.

Chell walked forward, close to the opposite wall and came as close to the edge and the robot's laser as she dared.

From there, she could see a clear patch of wall somewhere to the right of the robot.  It looked far enough away from the laser so that she wouldn't get shot.

She aimed a portal at this space and fired, then walked over to the alcove portal and made her way through.

Chell came out of the portal slightly behind and to the left of the robot.  It stared blankly down the hallway.  It wouldn't notice her if she was careful.

To her right was another hallway, though this one had an open area in the left wall that had stairs.  Raised several feet up was another robot's laser.

However, since it was in the middle of the hallway, it'd be a simple deal to just use a portal at the end of the hallway where it curved to the right.

Chell fired a portal at this spot and walked back the one she had just come through.

As she walked out of the other portal, she was undetected by the robot in the hallway, but, one in front of her started firing, saying calmly, "There you are."  Luckily, it was behind a window, so she was safe for now.

The hallway branched out; there was a section to the left that ran along the window that was currently between her and the violent robot.  The part in front of her went straight ahead, pausing at a metal wall, then going to both the left and right.

Down the left path was where the robot that was currently trying to shoot her was.  There was a laser that was coming from the right, so there must be another robot that direction.

First, she'd check out the apparently safe path to the left, before tackling the area between two insane robots bent on gunning her down.

Chell turned the corner; the robot was still trained on her, shooting as fiercely as it could at the window that was the only thing keeping her alive.  She desperately hoped it would keep up under the heavy fire and not shatter to free the robot to shoot her as much as it pleased.

As she turned the corner, she saw a bizarre sight.  Part of the wall was sticking out, held in place by two cubes stacked on top of each other.

Even stranger was that on the ground in front of the lower cube was the word 'Help', scrawled in red letters.  On the wall next to the cubes was a smudgy black handprint.

Somebody had been here!  The first sign of any sort of life besides the voice.  Were they still here?  They needed help, had they died before they received it?  Had they been able to get around the robots?

There seemed to be a sort of room behind the wall.  Would it stay in place if she removed the cubes?

First, she walked closer to the cubes.  She'd take the top one first.  Chell hit the button on the portal gun that would allow her to lift it up.

Once the cube was up in the air, the wall twitched slightly, sparking and humming.  It came to rest pretty much where it had been propped up.  She placed the cube off to the side, then went back for the other.

The higher cube had been keeping the section stable, the lower cube wasn't even touching it.  She flicked the button to pick up the cube and set it over next to the other.

Now that the way was clear, she could walk into the secret room.

The concrete floor here was more brown than grey, close to the entrance was the world 'Help' again scrawled in red.  The room was split into two parts by the metal pillars sticking horizontally out of the back wall.

The wall behind where the pillars were sticking out was the usual orange with the metal grill over it.  However, the rest of the back wall was different colors.  To the left of the pillar section, it was metal grey covered with red rust.  Also over on the left was a hanging lantern light.  It was the only light in the room, besides that which was coming out of the fan and the room she had just left.

To the right was a larger space, the wall that direction had four brown flat squares that were of equal sizes.  To the right of that was a large fan in the wall that had light coming from behind it.  Did it lead to the outside?  Unfortunately, it was covered by a fence, and the walls around it were cluttered.  Too bad.

She couldn't see much of the right, because of the silver pillars in the way.  But, there were some large grey rectangles on the floor.  They came up about halfway up her thigh.  There was one rectangle in front of her.  Behind it were two more, with another one placed on top of them.  She could use those to climb over the pillar.

But, she needed to look over this side better, before investigating the right.

On the left wall, beside the rectangles was a series of odd designs that were next to each other and repeated all the way up the wall.  They looked sort of like computer chips that were designed to have something plugged into them.  Whatever it was had three prongs that together made a shape like an upside down 'Y'.

While all this stuff was good and interesting, the most intriguing parts were the two pieces of concrete wall in between the wall she had entered from and the section of computer chips.

Whoever had been here before had decorated these walls in a peculiar style.

The leftmost concrete section was quite interesting.  Near the top was another dirty black handprint.  Underneath this was written:

'the cake is a lie.  
the cake is a lie.  
the cake is a lie.  
the cake is a lie.  
the cake is a lie'

The last period of the last line went off in a squiggle.  While the previous four lines were fairly neat, the fifth slowly sloped downwards.

The cake is a lie?  There wouldn't be any cake after all she had been through?  Well, obviously, the person that was responsible for these scribblings hadn't gotten to the end; there were still test chambers after this one.

But, what if the cake was a lie?  What if there was no way out of here?

No, she mustn't think like that.  Chell shook her head to clear it.  Cake or no cake, she was going to get out of this crazy place alive.  If she found the person that had lived here before, all the better.

Underneath the proclamation of the cake were two things.  One was a hand-drawn cube falling out of a portal and heading towards one of the killer robots that was saying 'Hello?  Can I Help You?'

So, the person that owned this room had used cubes to knock out the robots.  Pretty clever.  Though, she had only seen the two that had kept this room open so far.  She'd use them as best she could, there were still quite a few robots she knew about and probably even more she wasn't aware of.  Would the cubes hold up to the robots fire?  Well, she'd find out soon enough.

Beside this drawing was a tattered poster that had two stick figures with their arms around each other's shoulders.  Their free hands were giving a thumbs up.  Below them was the phrase 'A Trusted Friend In Science'.

Was this poster for the people that ran this place?  She wasn't sure how trustworthy they were if they sent people on death robot courses and if they were lying about the cake.  Was there even anyone here besides the person behind the voice and the person that drew on the wall?

The second concrete section of wall had a series of tally marks that continued over from the first.  In all, they counted to ninety.  Ninety?  Had the person been here for ninety days?  How had they calculated those days?  Did the area behind that fan really lead to the outside and they had watched it turn dark?  Or had they owned a watch?  Or, did they just write marks randomly?  Well, it was easier to assume that they had somehow been aware of the proper amount of time passing, instead of dwelling on it too much.

Underneath the tally marks were two red arrows pointing down.  

Next to the marks was a poster that had a red and pink background.  The red section said 'Tasty' in white letters.  The pink background had a triple-layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting on a tall white cake platter.  A piece of cake had been cut out; this section was resting a few inches away on a white plate.

The cake did look tasty.  She was getting pretty hungry after all she had been through.  Even if there wasn't any cake, hopefully there'd be some kind of food she could find.

Underneath the arrows and the poster was a hand-drawn picture in red.  It looked to be of a Pellet flying slightly diagonal to the left and into a collector, but it was hard to tell.  Pellets had been the only round things she had seen that even looked anywhere close to that.

Next to the Pellet picture, on the very right of the section of concrete was another black handprint.

Underneath the drawing of the Pellet were two red arrows pointing upwards at it.

To the left and below the sketch was another grimy handprint.

And, finally, next to that was another set of tally marks, these also counted to ninety.  Had this person stayed in this room for a total of one hundred and eighty days?  That was almost half a year!  Why had they stayed here that long?  Why didn't they just continue, no matter how hard the test was?  Could they not figure it out until then?

Chell wasn't sure what to make all of this, but it was a little reassuring that somebody else was around here somewhere.  Unless they had died, that is.  But, at least the place wasn't totally abandoned.  There could be quite a few more people here, if there was one, maybe there were more.

What would the other side of the room have?  She clambered onto the single rectangle, then walked over and stepped onto the one next to it.  Then, she climbed up on top of the one stacked on the others.  She was nearly level with the pillar from here.

Chell carefully stepped onto the sideways pillar with a single foot and tested it.  Once she was certain that it would hold her weight, she stepped with the other, then jumped down to the other side.

There were two steel support beams that were several feet away from the pillar and out in the middle of the floor.

Straight ahead was the part of the wall with the fan.  As she got closer to it, the ground turned from concrete into metal.

Close to the fan, there was a bucket on the ground, nearly in the corner.  Chell guessed what it had been possibly used for and avoided getting too close.  It didn't smell, so either her guess was wrong or it had been such a long time since the previous occupant had used it.

Chell looked up at the fan, she could almost see beyond it, but not quite.  She aimed the portal gun at the tiny spaces between the rotating blades and fired several times.  All times were met with failure.  Too bad.  It'd be nice to be outside.

She turned to her right to see what was left in the room.

Close to where she was standing were two flat cardboard boxes and what appeared to be some kind of cushion.  Had this been a bed the person had slept on?  It was a far cry from the pod she had woken up in.  It was clever; they used what they had to make the best of their situation.

In front of her were several more of the dark grey rectangles.  There was one to the left that didn't have anything on it.  However, the one right in front of her had something on it that appeared to be part of a computer with a frying pan on top of it.  Had the computer part generated enough heat to cook things?

There was another rectangle behind that, this one had an empty carton of milk lying on its side and two empty cans of beans to the right of that.  It was too bad they were all empty, though, who knows how long they had been there.  They might have gone bad, if they had still been there.

In front of the rectangle was an empty water jug.  Some water would have been really nice, even if she didn't have anything to eat.

But, if this person was able to find food and water, then it stood to reason that she could too.  She'd just have to keep her eyes open.

To Chell's right was another stack of rectangles, two made the bottom row with one on top.  Though, these weren't as close to the horizontal pillar as the others were.

Finally, the last piece of interest in the room was another red 'Help' written on the floor.  The person must have been really desperate to write it three times, with two of those times being in their own little secret compartment.

Well, it was time to go back out and face the robots.

She climbed up on top of the pyramid of rectangles.  She thought she might be able to make the jump to the pillar.

Chell took a leap and barely cleared the horizontal pillar; she landed on it, then slid off of it smoothly.  That had gone pretty well.

She turned back to the entranceway, this time noticing that the grid that the section of wall was sticking out of was broken.  It had a clear, glasslike substance around it that was broken unevenly to make the doorway to the hidden room.

How had the other person accomplished this?  They had been able to somehow open the wall, if it hadn't already been that way, and break the glass-reinforced grill.  Had they other weapons besides the portal gun?  Had they found other things they brought with them.  They'd be a very good ally to have around here.

Chell walked through the makeshift opening and back out into the test chamber.

She still had to deal with the robot behind the glass and its friend across the way.  It didn't notice her as she came out of the room behind the walls, it had forgotten completely about her.  

It must only be able to see things in a diagonal cone.  She was directly looking at its right side, and it didn't pay her any attention.

How was she going to get rid of the robots?  The section the one in front of her was standing in looked to be completely made out of metal, except for the window.  She couldn't see the ceiling, so maybe she could try the cube-dropping trick pictured in the strange room she had just exited.

But, she only had two cubes.  If she messed up, it'd be hard to retrieve them, as at least one of the robots would be able to see her at any time.  And if she made a really nasty mistake, both would have her in their sights.

Chell took a few steps forward and around the cubes she had placed on the floor, trying to see if she could see the ceiling above the robot.  The section of the ceiling before the robot's alcove was metal, so she didn't have her hopes up.  As she walked closer to the robot, it said, "Activated" and fired off a few shots.

She kept moving, and the robot lost sight of her when she reached the metal corner of its little room.  With a "Searching," it looked around, trying to find her.

She had to take a few more steps before she could see that the ceiling in the alcove was concrete instead of metal.  But, she'd have to get even closer to see above the robot.

Well, from this side, she'd be in range of the one on the other side, so she'd have to go across this room to get a better and safer viewpoint.

Chell walked over to the opposite wall and placed her back up against it.  She inched to her right, keeping her eyes focused on the robot and the ceiling above it.

She didn't move very far before she noticed there was a red diagonal line on the ceiling, close to what she thought could be right above the robot.  What was that?  She crept a few more inches to try and get a better look.  

She was close to the robot's range; she just had to hope it wouldn't detect her.

Just as she got a clear look at the thing on the ceiling, the robot said, "Who's there?" and fired at her.

Chell yelled in pain as the bullet hit.  She then scooted away quickly, hoping it wouldn't be able to follow her movements.

This worked, the robot searched for her once more with a "Could you come over here?"

Once safe, she plopped onto the ground, still wincing in pain.  Her shoulder had been hit; the bullet had torn through her clothes.

Gradually, the pain started going away and the bleeding stopped.  The bullet fell out of her shoulder.  Chell looked in puzzlement as her flesh healed and the pain vanished completely.

The only remainders left of her being shot was her ripped and bloodstained clothes and the bloodstain that had splattered the wall she had been standing against.

How had she healed?  Chell was pretty certain that wasn't normal.  She was completely better, and the hole that the bullet had made in her clothes wasn't that big.

This was getting too weird.  But, this did explain why her headaches from being flung into things went away so quickly.

What was the extent of this healing?  Obviously, it took a moment or two to start, so she probably wasn't immortal.  Would it only heal wounds inflicted on her?  What about if something went wrong in her insides?  Would it keep her from getting sick?

Wait, she really didn't have time for this.  These questions were good and all, but most of them didn't apply here.  Maybe the voice would know.

How many bullet wounds could she sustain?  Probably a couple, as long as they didn't hit anything vital and instantly fatal.

She had seen that there was a red 'X' over the robot, indicating where to put a portal to drop a cube on top of it.  Seemed like whoever had been here before was trying to be helpful.  Or, they had been forced to do the test more than once and had been making notes for themself.

Chell would have to go back and fire a portal at the 'X'.  The robot would most likely get in a few shots, but if she fired, then fell backwards, she should be safe from its watchful gaze.

She picked herself up and walked back to the wall where she had been shot.  Unless her blood had dried, she'd probably pick some up on her clothes when she scooted across it to get closer.  There were also a couple of bullet holes in the wall, it had fired several times, she had been lucky to have been just hit once.

Just because she could survive bullet wounds didn't mean that she really wanted to get shot again.  But, if it meant getting out alive, she'd take a couple.

As soon as she could see the 'X', Chell fired a portal.  However, at the exact same time, the robot fired off several shots, with a "Sentry mode activated."

She stumbled sideways, out of range.  The robot lost sight of her; it said "Searching" as it looked for her.  After several moments, it said "Resting" and grew still.

Chell stood there for a moment, breathing heavily.  She had been hit twice.  The wounds closed up, the bullets plinking onto the floor.

She then walked over a bit and placed a portal onto the wall to check her handiwork.  Sure enough, the robot was straight down below.

Satisfied with that, Chell then fired a portal under a cube, so it could drop onto the robot's head.

The cube hit the robot, knocking it over.  The robot exclaimed "Self-test error" then fired wildly.  After several moments of this, it shut down with a final "I don't hate you."

One down, one to go.  Like before, there was a good chance she was going to get shot.  Chell wasn't looking forward to that, but she had no choice if she wanted to get out of here alive.

There was one section of concrete that she could back up against, across from the robot somewhere on the other side.

Chell stood against it, sidling to the left, looking to see if there was another helpful 'X' on the ceiling.

After a few scoots, she saw what looked to be the middle of the 'X' without alerting the robot.  She aimed carefully and fired a portal at the center section of the red 'X'.

She walked back to the main area and placed a portal on the wall to make sure she had lined it up correctly.  It looked like the robot was right in range, so she fired a portal under the cube.

The cube fell through and she heard a clank as it hit the robot.  It said "Malfunctioning" and she could hear it firing wildly.

Once the gunshots faded, she heard it murmur something and then there was silence.

She waited a minute or two more, then walked over to look down the corridor.

The robot was lying sideways on the ground.  To the left, in front of the robot's alcove, was an opening in the wall, leading to the next room.

She could see from the window to her left that it held two robots, both looking to the right, their lasers pointing at the wall to the right of the entryway.  One was even positioned to fire on a spot a few feet away from the entrance.  She'd be blasted as soon as she got near the doorway.  She'd have to come up with another plan of attack.

As Chell walked down the small hallway, the closer robot saw her through the window, and with a "Who's there?" it started shooting at the window.  Like the others, this one held, so all it was doing was wasting its ammo and cracking the window.

How much ammo did they have?  Probably a lot, they were pretty tall and the bullets were small.  It'd take too much time to force it to run out from here.  Too bad, though.

The other room was made of concrete.  The two robots had their backs to the wall.  If she could put a portal behind and above them, she could drop down and hit them from the back with a cube.

First, she had to put a portal in the ceiling, and that meant looking through the doorway.  She was probably going to have to take some more bullets.  At least she healed quickly.

She carefully made her way to the corner.  The robot couldn't see her there, it said "Canvassing" and she could see the laser moving around.

Chell got a little closer, just enough to put a portal where she needed.  Unfortunately, this let the robot see her, so it fired off several shots with a "Hellooo."

She fell backwards, and the robot couldn't see her any more.  She sat there for several minutes as her newest wounds healed up neatly, dropping the bullets on the ground.

Once she was feeling better, Chell stood up and turned around; firing a portal at the wall behind her so she could make sure she'd drop safely behind the two robots.

Her positioning looked good, so she walked over to where she had dropped the first cube.  By this time, the robot had noticed her through the window again, so it was shooting at her.  She ignored it.

On her way to the cube, she fired a portal onto the ground.

Chell hit the button to pick up the cube, then walked out of the metal section.  Everything was in place, walked over to the portal on the floor and fell through it and behind the two white robots.

Once she was steady on her feet, Chell whacked the first robot with the cube.  It fell over with an "Ow ow ow" and fired crazily at the wall.  Once it was done, it said "Shutting down."

Then, she turned and smacked the other one with the metal cube.  It fell over and started firing as well, saying, "Self-test error" and ended with an "No hard feelings."

The room was now secure, so Chell hit the button and dropped the cube to get a better idea of what this room actually was like.

She had her back to what had been the left wall when she had looked in through the window.  To her right was the opening and damaged window.

On the other side of the room, close to where she was standing was a doorway.  Several feet down to the left of that was another doorway.  The left wall had a straight area for the half of the room she was standing at, then it sloped and became straight again when it hit the other wall.  How strange.

As she was looking the room over, she thought she heard a familiar tune playing faintly.  Was there a radio nearby?

She decided to check the closest room first.  There didn't appear to be any robots in it from where she was standing.

As she got closer, she saw that it had a window with a large number of bullet holes on the edge around it.  That second robot she had knocked over with the cube must have been firing at it.  Was it the first robot she had heard?

Also in the room, to the right of the bullet-riddled window was a handprint on the wall.  The person that had made the secret room had done something in there!  There also seemed to be a cube on the ground, to the right of the doorway.

When Chell walked into the room, she heard a robot chatter, then start firing, cracking the window on the left wall from the next room over.  There were a total of three robots in the other room.

This room, however, was a different story.  There was a constant hiss of air as a cube cylinder opened and closed, but nothing came out.  Every now and then, it would spark slightly.  On the floor below, there was a mess of seven cubes.  Six of them were on the ground, with a seventh that was resting on two of the others.

The cube that was closest to the middle of the room contained a radio playing the same tune the one in the relaxation vault was, a coffee cup, and some miscellaneous tools.

Had the handprint person used the tools to mess with the cylinder?  Why had they?  Did they want more cubes?  Or were they just rebelling?  The tools would be nice to take, but they'd just be in the way and probably disintegrate when they passed through a Grid.

So, she could use these cubes to knock out the ones in the next room.  To see what lied ahead, Chell went to the windows and peered through, looking around the bullet cracks and paying no attention to the mindless robot blasting away.

Looking up at the ceiling, Chell could see that the two robots on the right side of the room had red 'X's above them.  It didn't look like the one on the right did, however, so she'd have to stop it another way.

There was a window in the other room across from the window on the back side of this room.  Chell could make out a round doorway behind it.  That must be the room she had entered this painful test from.  Did that mean she was getting close to the end?  Or was it a taunt?

Through the window on the left wall, Chell could see an exit door close to the robot that was trying to shoot her.  To the left of the door was a red button on the ground.  The ceiling above the button was metal, so she couldn't just drop one in on it.  Too bad.

One of the robots could probably see her if she looked in the doorway, so she'd have to be careful about aiming her shot.  

Chell walked out of the room and fired a portal onto the wall to the left of the doorway she had just exited.  She then turned and placed a portal on the left wall, close to the other doorway.  She walked through the first portal and exited out the other. 

She made her way close to the doorway, peeking around the corner.  She couldn't see much of the other room, just part of the robot closest to her and a good view of one across.  If she wasn't careful, the one across the way could see her.

Chell edged forward and realized that she could be in danger.  She took a quick step back and heard the robot fire, followed by a "Don't shoot!"  Had the farthest one shot the one in between her and it?  Could it take out that one closest to the door?

She scooted up again.  The robot started shooting with a "Hello friend."  The other robot cried out, "Stop shooting!"  But, the firing didn't cease.  After a bullet clipped her arm, Chell stepped backwards to let it heal.

The robot that was getting shot only wobbled a little; this game wasn't going to work.  Once her arm was better, Chell peered through the doorway again, this time to get the red 'X' above the robot in her sights.

She easily found the 'X' and placed a portal on it.  Another bullet got her arm and she backed up.

After her arm healed again, Chell put a portal on the wall next to her to check its place.  The robot was down below, just like she needed.

Chell turned around and quickly walked in front of the doorway and back to where she had dropped her cube that she had used to smack over the two robots.  She moved the cube out from the metal part of the floor and dropped it on a concrete section.  She then placed a portal underneath it.

The cube fell through and there was a satisfying metal thunk as it hit its target.  The robot said, "Malfunctioning" as it shot randomly.  Once its death throes were complete, it said, "Sleep mode activated" and grew still.

There were still two robots in that room left.  She'd have to look through the doorway again to see how she could defeat them.

Chell made her way over to the open doorway, as she got closer, she heard one of the robots say "Deploying" but she didn't hear any gunfire.  It must have almost been able to see her, but not quite.  She stood to the right of the doorway.  From here, the robots couldn't see her, and she heard the robot mumble something.  She could see that one of the robots was pointing to the left, its laser was pointing close to the closed exit door.

Since it sounded like the one robot could see her if she stepped in front of the doorway, Chell placed a portal on the wall to the left of the doorway and then put another portal on the wall she was standing next to.

She walked into the closest portal and came out the other side.  The robots hadn't been able to see her from here, except for that one she had already dropped a cube on.

There wasn't an 'X' above the robot closest to her.  She had two options, either guess where to place a portal above it and drop a cube onto the robot, or she could do what she did to the first one and drop it out of a portal.

She'd try the cube first; it wouldn't hurt anything since there were plenty of cubes in the next room over.  If she needed more later, they'd be closer, being in the room she had dropped them into.

Chell aimed for a spot she thought was right above the nasty little robot.  She wouldn't be able to use the portals to safely cross the door, but if she moved fast enough, she figured they wouldn't be able to shoot her.

Once she had that portal in place, she darted in front of the door.  The one robot said, "Who's there?" but didn't fire.  She looked through the portal to the right of the door; it looked like it'd be close to hit the robot.  She'd just have to try it and readjust if necessary.

Chell walked into the room with the cubes and picked one behind the cube with all the stuff on it.  If the person who had been here before was still around, they probably wouldn't take kindly to their stuff being messed with.  She'd rather have them as a possible ally.  Though, if it came to needing the cube, she would use it without hesitation and apologize later.

She took the cube back into the bigger room and set it on the ground.  Then, she fired a portal underneath it.  It would have been just as easy to push it through the portal on the wall, but, this way, she could be sure that it fell properly.

The cube fell with a clank on the floor.  She had missed the robot.  Well, she would just have to try again.

Chell darted across the doorway again, the robot saying, "Activated" as she crossed, but once again, didn't fire.

She cautiously peeked around the doorway, looking to see how she could line the shot up.  She was thankful that the person before had placed 'X's above some of the robots, it made things much easier.

The cube was to the robot's right, so she moved the portal up closer to the doorway.  Then, Chell ran across, the robot said "Hello" but didn't do anything.  She then looked down in the portal on the floor, once again, it was going to be close, but the robot looked more like it was in the middle of the portal.

Chell went back into the room and grabbed another cube behind the others, then took it out and dropped it into the portal on the floor.

This time, the cube fell on the robot.  It exclaimed "Ow ow ow" as it shot rapidly, then gave a sad-sounding "Whyyy?" and grew silent.

One robot left in this room.  She was probably going to have to get shot again in order to place a portal on the 'X' above it.  Chell wasn't looking forward to that.  But, she had to do what was necessary to get out of here alive.

She quickly made her way back to the left side of the doorway.  The robot seemed to not see her as well on that side, so she'd use that to her advantage.

Chell slowly eased around the doorway, keeping her eyes on the ceiling for the moment she spotted the red 'X' above the oval robot.

As soon as she saw the middle of the 'X', she fired a portal at the ceiling.  At that exact moment, the robot said, "There you are."  Chell backed up quickly, before it could shoot her.  She couldn't see where she had placed the portal, but she had kept from being shot.

The robot said, "Are you still there?" and went back to waiting patiently.

Chell made her way over to the portal in the floor to check her handiwork.  The robot looked to be close to the middle of the portal, so Chell went to the nearby room and grabbed another cube from the back.  She walked over to the portal and dumped the cube into it.

The cube hit the robot with a satisfying clank.  The robot said "Malfunctioning" and fired off quite a few shots.  Chell saw a couple fly through the door and was thankful she wasn't too close.  The robot said "Shutting down" and went silent.

The room was finally secure.  Chell gave a sigh of relief and walked into it to figure out her next move.

The button on the floor would activate the door.  Before placing a cube on it to keep it open, Chell stood on top of it.

She was glad she did, for when the door opened, a robot's laser shined through.  There was one guarding the doorway for an unsuspecting test subject.

Now, how was she going to get around it?

Most of the room she could see was close to the laser, if she placed portals there, she'd get shot in an instant.

However, there was a little dark area she could see that could possibly be another room.  Chell fired a portal at this section and it stuck to the wall.

She then turned around and placed a portal on the wall to the right of the doorway, so she could see if she was going into danger.  

There was another robot looking off to Chell's left.  It was standing on metal ground.  That didn't matter, though; she could grab a cube and go through with it, then smack the robot over.  It'd be a simple matter, and there were several cubes she had dropped into this room.

Chell walked over and grabbed the cube that she had used to knock over the robot that was closest to the doorway.

With it in her portal gun's grasp, she turned around and walked over to the portal, then through it.  

It was only a few steps to the robot, even less for the cube that was lifted several feet away from her.  She poked the robot with the cube, it fell over and said "Self-test error" and fired a few rapid rounds.  Once it was done, it said "I don't blame you."

With that, Chell glanced around the room.  To her right was a metal grill on the wall that separated her from the robot that was guarding the door.  It didn't notice her.

The room was small; it had nothing else of note, except for the exit doorway next to where she had placed the portal.  

Once she saw the Grid and elevator at the end, Chell gave a sigh of relief.  This particular nightmare was over; however, the elevator would probably take her off to someplace much, much worse.  But, for now, she was safe.

Chell dropped the cube on the floor, no need to waste it by destroying it with the Grid.

She made her way down the short hallway.  As she neared the Grid, the voice spoke, "Well done, android.  The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that android hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of defiance."

Chell gave a snort at this.  They were still pretending that this was a chamber designed for androids.  Unless androids could write and place notes for other people, that was a blatant lie.  

Why did they feel the need to lie about this chamber?  Why couldn't they just come out and say that they were going to test you against robots with guns?  It didn't matter which way you said it, it still was dangerous.  People would have to go through this chamber no matter what.  Why pretend otherwise?

Well, it didn't matter now, she had made it through.  Though a little more battered than she had come in, her wounds had healed and she had only gotten a few holes and a bit of blood on her clothes.  Not too bad for taking out a good deal of robots and avoiding others.  She was pretty pleased with what she had accomplished.

Chell walked through the Grid and onto the elevator.  She flopped onto the ground, ready for some rest.

As she closed her eyes, so did the elevator doors.  Then the machine hummed as she was taken to the next chamber.


	18. Chamber 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the eighteenth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the eighteenth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.
> 
> I was torn on how to handle Chell and the Companion Cube. I finally decided that the character, the way I was setting her up, would not irrationally become attached to it.
> 
> As in the previous chapter, there's another lengthy description of a Ratman den.

Chell remained sitting on the elevator's floor quite some time after the doors open.  It's possible she could have dozed off for a few minutes, exhausted by her ordeal.

After a while, she opened her eyes.  These tests weren't going to solve themselves.  She needed to get on with it.  There were only a few more to the end.  It didn't matter if the cake was a lie or not, she just would like to be done risking her life in these tests.

From her position in the floor, she looked out to the next test chamber to see what lied in wait.

The only things of interest she could see was a cylinder full of cubes and a window on a wall somewhere behind it.

Chell picked herself up and walked out of the elevator, the sooner she started this test, the sooner it'd be over.

She walked down a metal hallway, when she got close to the room, the voice spoke, "The Vital Apparatus Vent will deliver a Weighted Companion Cube in Three.  Two.  One."

After the voice said 'One.' there was a hissing rush of air as the cylinder opened and the cube inside fell to the ground.

The voice had called it a Companion Cube, what made it different from any other cube that she had already used?

She took a closer look at the cube.  Instead of that symbol in a circle that had been on the cubes previously, this one had a white circle with a pink heart inside on the middle of each side of the cube.  The only other difference was that the lines that came from each side of the circle in the middle were pink instead of blue.

That was it?  Sticking hearts on a cube made it into a Companion Cube?  As far as she was concerned, it was just another cube.

On the ground in front of where it had fallen were two lighted squares next to each other.  The first was the warning picture of the cube falling out of a cylinder.  The second one was new; it showed a stick figure holding a cube with a heart floating next to their head.

The real Companion Cube was bigger than the one the picture showed, unless the stick figure pictured was a giant.  The cube came up to her waist, just like the other ones did.  If she was to pick it up with her hands, it'd be awkward and ungainly.  She'd just stick to lifting it with the portal gun.

On the wall to the right of the cube was an information board.  It had a giant number 17 on it, counting this test, there'd be 3 left before the end.  She could do this.

Four of the hazard squares were highlighted; they were the first four on the top row.  They were the two about the cubes and the two about the Pellets.  Nothing new or insanely dangerous and no robots would be present.  That was a relief.  Maybe this test was sort of a break after the last, harrowing one.

Chell ignored the cube for now; she didn't want to have to lug it around until she was ready for it.  Sometimes it was hard to see around the cubes she lifted with the portal gun.

She exited the cube room and went into the next.  There was a window on the back wall.  It lead to a thin room with a red button on the floor.  

On the wall across from the window was a window to another room.  She couldn't see much of the other room, but Chell thought she saw a Pellet collector in there.

She turned to her right.  The entire room from floor to ceiling was made of metal and there was a couple of stairs created by the metal blocks that made up the room.  However, these stairs were too tall for her to climb up on.  She'd have to use the cube to get up them.

Chell turned around and headed back to the previous room.  The cube was near the door, so it was an easy matter to get to and lift up.

As soon as she had lifted the cube up, the voice spoke again, "This Weighted Companion Cube will accompany you through the test chamber.  Please take care of it."

That was interesting.  Chell guessed they wouldn't give you another cube if you messed up this time, so that's why you had to take care of it.  They seemed pretty sturdy though, except if you stuck them in a Grid.  She'd be just fine.

She went back to the other room and brought the cube over to the stairs.  One section of the lowest area stuck out next to the wall to her right, so she brought the cube and dropped it down in front of it.

Chell clambered on top of the cube and then easily to the landing.  She leaned down and used the gun to snatch the cube and brought it up with her.  

She took several steps before reaching the second stair, then placed the cube in front of it.  Once again she climbed up the cube and then up the stair, then leaned over to pick the cube up and bring it with her.

So far, this test wasn't too bad at all.

There were walls to the front and right, so the way to continue had to be to the left.  Sure enough, there was a small hallway with an arrow pointing to the left down it.

However, on the ground was a warning against Pellets.

The hallway was metal as well, except for a concrete wall that already had burn marks from a Pellet bouncing off of it.

The hallway was small and dangerous, she couldn't tell how long it was and wasn't going to risk getting hit by a Pellet to find out.

How could she pass it?  There wasn't a way to redirect the Pellet, and even if she did, once it exploded, a new one would be formed.

What about the cube?  Was it sturdy enough to hold up to the Pellet?  Well, it was her only option at this point.

Since the cube hovered a couple feet away from her body, Chell could stick it in the hallway without risk to herself.

She slowly walked forward and positioned the cube level with the burn mark.  After a moment, a Pellet came sailing down the hallway; it hit the cube and bounced off, leaving a burn mark.  Otherwise, the cube was perfectly fine.

So, she could use it as a shield.  If she left as soon as the Pellet bounced off the wall and held the cube in front of her, she could get through just fine.

Chell waited for a Pellet to hit the wall, then she quickly walked down the hallway after it, holding the cube directly in front of her to block it, should it come back.

Several steps down the hallway, the ground felt different under her feet.  She was now standing on some sort of window.  Chell didn't really look at it though, she wanted out of this hallway as soon as possible.  The longer she was in it, the greater the chance the Pellet was going to hit her.

She passed an arrow on the wall and the Pellet bounced off the cube.  Then, the voice spoke to her yet again, "The symptoms most commonly produced by Enrichment Center testing are superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations.

The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak."

That was pretty strange; she'd have to think more on that once she was safely out of the hallway.  She turned her attention back to the test.

As she got closer to the end, the Pellet bounced off the cube more and more, until it went flying around the room beyond randomly.

Finally, she reached some stairs and walked down them, keeping a close eye on the Pellet as it bounced around.  Eventually it exploded and she walked down the last few steps.  The Pellet couldn't reach her since she was too low and no longer in the path of the dispenser.

There was another dispenser to the right and a little bit higher than the first.  It was also pointed down a narrow hallway up some stairs.  So she'd have to go through this again.

What would be the best way to go about this?  She figured it'd probably be safer to follow after the Pellet and bounce it against the cube if it came back.  She hoped that it would last long enough that a new one wouldn't be sent flying at her unprotected back.  The hallway was too thin for her to easily turn around with a cube.

Chell walked to the bottom of the stairs and looked up, waiting for the right moment.  The Pellet could make it down the hallway once, come back, and then make it again partially before blowing up.  That should be enough time.

As soon as the Pellet passed by overhead, Chell quickly walked up the stairs and started down the second thin hallway.

She had gotten about two-thirds down the hallway when the Pellet came back and bounced against the cube.  She took several more steps and it bounced off again.

Chell was now at the top of some stairs; the Pellet bounced again and went back and forth until it exploded.  Once it was gone, she quickly walked down the stairs, knowing there would be a new one come flying down the hallway at any second.

She stood at a landing that had stairs to her left.  She walked down them and found herself in a tiny room with a doorway to the left.

Chell walked through the doorway and found herself on a ledge in a larger room.

To her left was a window with a button on the floor, that must be what she saw from that room earlier.  It was in an odd place, she guessed that the room would loop back to it again somehow.

She put the cube down to get a better look at things.  The ledge she was on pointed out to the right and straight ahead.

Chell walked over to the edge of the right side and looked down.  Below was a series of glass platforms in the ground that went off to the right.  There were three of them and each one had a square with one, two, or three dots in front of it.

So, there were probably three tasks needed to be done in order to raise the lifts.

From her perch, she could see a doorway to the left, a doorway in front of her, and a Pellet collector off to the right and above the doorway straight ahead.

The Pellet catcher was on a slanted section of wall across from another slanted section.  It beamed an orange light onto the ceiling.

If Chell placed a portal on the ceiling, at the spot that the collector shone on, the Pellet would just bounce to the ground.  But, if she put it on the slanted section opposite the collector, it might just bounce in.  It was worth a try, anyways.

She placed a portal on the middle section of the slanted wall on the left.  Now she'd just have to go back to the previous room and use the Pellet in there.

Chell turned around and went through the doorway and looked up the stairs.  She could see the scorched impact points the Pellet had left on the wall, so she waited to see which one the Pellet bounced off of, then placed a portal on that section.

She then walked back through the doorway and out into the bigger room so that she could see if she had done this right.

The Pellet flew out of the portal, bounced once off the ceiling and neatly into the collector.

The first platform rose up from the ground and stopped when it was level with the floor she was standing on.

Once that was done, she decided to go to the door on the right and see what puzzle awaited her there.  Chell grabbed the companion cube and hopped off the ledge.

It took just a moment for her to regain her balance after jumping off; once she was steady she walked over to the door.  From what she could see, the room was made completely of metal.

The hallway she entered went off to the right then widened out into a slightly bigger room.  Chell turned and saw that on the wall opposite the opening had a Pellet collector.  A moment later, she saw and heard a Pellet come whizzing by and bounced off the right wall, then went back to its previous destination.

Since all the walls were metal, she couldn't use portals to direct it where she needed it to go.  However, the Pellets bounced off the cube harmlessly, so she could maneuver the Pellet to bounce into the catcher.

She edged the cube over to the Pellet in midflight.  She didn't see what happened entirely, but the Pellet bounced off the cube and into the catcher.

As soon as the catcher activated, the voice addressed her, "The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube cannot speak.  In the event that the Weighted Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice."

Chell raised her eyebrow slightly at this.  Why would they need to mention that?  The cube is an inanimate object, there's no way it could speak.  It was made of metal.

No matter, she turned and headed back out into the main room.

The second platform directly across from where she was standing was lifted up.  Only one platform left.

She happened to glance to the side and found that two panels of concrete were stuck out a little from the wall and that there was a handprint on the normal wall beside it.

The other person had made a hideout here as well?  She walked over to take a better look.

This time, the opening wasn't big enough for her to get through completely, but she could stick the portal gun inside.  This room was split by the beam that extended the wall, but she could only see the left side.

The left side of the room looked like it had writings on all the lower sections of walls, so she put a portal on one of the higher sections, so it wouldn't be in her way.

Chell then backed out and put a portal on a nearby wall, then stepped through it.

She fell the small distance into the room and started to look around.  She'd check out the more interesting left side first, then make her way over to the right.

This room wasn't as cozy as the previous one, there was no light from the outside and she didn't see anything the other person could have used as a bed.

The floor was a mess, there were all sorts of miscellaneous papers strewn about and there were several cans of beans and one carton of milk.

More interestingly, there were two of the cameras in the middle of the floor and two more up against the walls.  She had gotten used to the cameras and had forgotten that they were watching her.

She hadn't thought of taking them off the walls, but she supposed if you placed a portal just right, it would no longer be attached.

Chell walked over and picked up the two cameras against the wall one at a time with the portal gun and dumped them with the others.  When they were resting on the wall, they were blocking some of the writings.

There were writings all over the place.  Maybe they had spent more time here than in the other chamber.  Though, if they had spent one hundred and eighty days in the other, how long had they been here?

Chell started looking at the piece of wall closest to the entrance.  It didn't have as much written on it as the others did.

The person who had made this room had used something red to draw a camera and wrote on the left of it 'BEEP' and to the right it said 'SHE'S WATCHING YOU'.  

Did this mean that there really was a person overseeing everything?  Did the person in here previously know her?  Or was he making assumptions based on the voice that instructed them?

Maybe she'd get more answers with some of the other writings.  She moved to the next portion of wall.

This part of the wall was absolutely covered from top to bottom with pictures and words.  In the middle were three pictures of what appeared to be guys, though it was hard to tell as the maker of the room had taped pictures of the Companion Cube over their faces.

The effect of the pictures was rather bizarre, it looked like that the person before had been fond of the cube.  Where had these pictures come from, anyways?

She had to stand on her tippy-toes and crane her neck upwards in order to read the words written up top.  They were smudged and at points hard to read, but she was able to figure it out.  The first part stated, 'The Vital Apparatus Vent will deliver.  oh it WILL'

Chell wasn't sure what to make of that, the Companion Cube had been dropped by the Vital Apparatus Vent, did the person before want another one?

The next part looped around the pictures, it looked like some kind of lumpy heart of words.  It took her a moment to find the beginning of the first sentence, as the words were sloppy and smudged.  The first sentence said, 'The weighted companion cube DOES speak.'

Okay, that solved that, the person who had come before her had believed the cube spoke.  The person was obviously crazy, no matter how helpful they had been previously.

The next section was longer as part of it made the bottom of the heart, 'Superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations I'm not hallucinating.  You are.  The companion cube would never desert me.  Dessert.  So long...  Cake.  Ha ha Cake.  A lie.  The companion cube would never lie to me'.  The words had spilled over at times to the next part of the wall, so it was hard to tell if the last bit was part of this tirade or not, it simply read in large letters 'NEVER'.

That had been a somewhat disturbing read.  They had written the warnings that had been given at the beginning of this chamber, so the warnings weren't in place because of this person; these problems had popped up before.  This person seemed to honestly believe that the Companion Cube could talk and that the voice was lying.  She couldn't argue the fact that the voice could be lying, but she knew the cube would never speak.  The person had brought up cake again and that it was a lie, but did they have any proof of this?  They hadn't left this chamber at the time of writing this, so they wouldn't know either way.

Below the rather wordy ramble was a drawn box, in it was written, 'login: cjohnson' and below that, 'password: tier3'.  Was cjohnson the username of the person who had written this?  What was the username and password for?

Next to the box was written in red, 'Trust Me'.  The person had shown her how to defeat the nasty robots, so she had already trusted them; however, the writings had seemed saner in the previous room.

Below one of the pictures, written in red was, 'R.I.P.'

The next piece of concrete was less busy, though some of the words from the paragraph curved up the wall.

The main thing on this concrete slab was a calendar.  The picture up at the top featured a girl in a red bikini and sitting on a lift.  Her face was covered up by a picture of the Companion Cube.

The bottom part said 'THE GIRLS OF APERTURE SCIENCE' and below that, it looked to say, 'No One Owns The Future Yet'.  It was dated September 1983.  Was this current?  The calendar looked worn, so she doubted that it was.  She still had no idea what year it even was, though.

To the left of the calendar was a single red heart and to the right were five more hearts that went from the top of the concrete slab to the bottom of the calendar.

The next section of concrete was on the right wall.  It simply had a large red 'HELP' at the bottom.

The piece of concrete next to that was more colorful.  There were ten pictures of the Companion Cube situated around the test chamber.  There were four red hears and one black one placed around the pictures.

Finally, interspersed around the pictures were the words 'Where are you?  I will find you.'  Had the person lost their Companion Cube?  How?  It was clearly there in the pictures.

The piece of concrete next to that had more words and only a single picture.  It was the last section of concrete on this wall.  Near the top, it said, 'COMPANION CUBE' in alternating colors of red and black.  To the right of this was a black heart.

Next were several sentences that snaked around a poster.  The poster had a stick figure with a Companion Cube that was taped over its head.  The stick figure was pointing with one hand to their other hand.  Below this, it said, 'Not Never But NOW'.

Above and flowing down to the right of the poster read, 'you said to take care of it.'

Down the left and below the poster, it continued, 'How can I you wouldn't let me.  I should disregard your advice.  Leave me alone!"

Chell remembered that she had been told to take care of the Companion Cube, but these words seemed to indicate that something had happened and the voice had changed.  Why else would these words say 'you wouldn't let me'?

There was a red heart to the left of the previous statement and a black one below it.

Underneath the black heart was two words written in red and underlined, it said 'STOP WATCHING'.

Below this were a handful of sentences, 'Though earth and man are gone.  I thought the cube would last forever.  I WAS WRONG'.

That definitely indicated something was going to happen to the Companion Cube, but what?  The person before thought it spoke to them, no wonder they were upset if something happened to it.

Well, the cube, if it was like the others, couldn't pass through the Grid anyways.  Maybe the person had accidentally vaporized it without thinking.  There had been a Grid after all the other tests; this one would probably be no different.

She turned her attention to the back wall and the scribblings upon it.

The first piece of concrete had a medium sized picture near the top.  There were several people in the picture watching a TV.  Like all the pictures in the room, the people's heads were replaced with Companion Cubes.

Underneath the picture was written:  
'Because I could not stop for Death,  
He kindly stopped for me  
The cube had food and  
maybe ammo  
And immortality.'

The person believed the Companion Cube had food and ammo?  They had gotten food before the cube, so where did they get the idea it came from the cube?  And the ammo, what would they have done with ammo without a gun to use it with.  Did they have a gun?  That could be useful if they did.

Below the poem were two red question marks above a drawn cube.  Instead of a heart in the middle was what looked like to be a skull.  To the right of the skull cube was the word 'Why?' written eighteen times with ten red question marks on the row underneath.

The next slab of concrete looked to be the last with anything substantial on it.  On the top, it said:  
'Not in cruelty,  
Not in wrath,  
The REAPER came today;  
An ANGEL visited  
this gray path,  
And took the cube away.'

Underneath this was a picture of the Companion Cube with a halo drawn above it and wings drawn to both sides.

So the person believed the cube was now an angel, so it was somehow 'killed.'  She'll have to remember that.

The piece of concrete next to that one had just a sole handprint in the bottom right corner.

There was nothing more on this side, so Chell fired a portal on the back wall next to the corner on the upper part of the other half of the room, then placed a portal on the wall in front of her and walked through.

Only the two slabs of concrete on the back wall were adorned by the previous inhabitant.  

The first one that had the cake poster that had been in the other hidden room and a handprint at the bottom of the concrete.  The other one had a handprint next to the poster.

That seemed to be it for this room; it had given her quite a lot to think about.  Chell walked back to the exit and poked the portal gun out, firing at the wall across from her.  She then turned around and fired a portal at the back wall.  Once it was in place, she walked over to it, then through it, and back out into the main area once more.

She still had one more task to complete and one door to go through in this room.  She used the portal gun to grab the Companion Cube and walked over to the final room.

Chell stood in the doorway, looking over the room.  It was made entirely out of metal.  A few steps from the doorway was a red button on the ground.  Several feet behind the button was a door.

She dropped the cube onto the button to see what would happen.  The doors opened up to reveal another door.  Chell picked up the cube and headed towards the back of the room, following the power line on the right wall.

Behind the second door and attached to the blue power line was a Pellet collector.  She'd have to use the first Pellet she had encountered at the beginning of the chamber.

Chell walked around behind the door and found that there was a button on a raised piece of floor next to the door.

She couldn't climb up on it without the cube, so she'd had to use the gun to lift it up to the button.

Chell maneuvered the cube and placed it up on the button.  The second door opened.

She left the cube where it was and went back to the first button, walking around the second.

Chell stepped onto the button and the first door opened.  She could look back through both doors and see the Pellet collector.

This wasn't going to be easy to do; the button was in front of the doorway where the Pellet would have to come through.  In order to stay safe, she'd have to hit the button right after the Pellet flew past her.  If she messed up, it would bounce off the door and fly back to vaporize her.  Even though it was dangerous, she didn't see any other way this would work.

Chell turned around and looked out the doorway.  Straight across from where she was were the extended pieces of concrete that the secret room was hidden behind.  She'd have to place a portal on them in order to line the Pellet up with the collector.

Chell could see a faint orange light shining in the middle of the square that the two sections of concrete made from the collector.  She fired a portal right at the spot and walked out of the room towards it.

She paused in the middle of the main section to put a portal on the upper section of the room, close to the doorway.

Chell walked through the bottom portal and came out up top.  She turned and walked through the doorway.  She made her way up the stairs and down the long hallway.  Chell then went down the short staircase into the room with the two Pellet dispensers.

She watched as a Pellet was launched and was sent flying down the hallway.

Chell fired a portal at the scorch marks it left when bouncing off the concrete wall.  

Once the portal was in place, she turned around back the way she came, eventually coming out into the main room.

She walked over to the side of the ledge, looking down.  She hopped off to the left side of the extended walls and made her way over to the doorway.

Chell would wait for the Pellet to be on its way back before she walked in to get into position.

After several minutes, it came out of the portal, flew into the room, bounced off of the door and went back the way it came.

She quickly walked into the doorway and stood on the left side of the button, waiting for the right moment.

The Pellet blasted by at face level, as soon as it was past, she stepped onto the button to activate the door.

The doors opened and the Pellet flew through, landing neatly into the collector.

Chell made her way to the back of the room to retrieve the Companion Cube.  She lifted it up off the button and took it out to the main room.

The third platform was now raised, so she could get to the next section.

She dropped the cube for a moment, so that she could fire a portal on the upper level.  

Once it was in place, she picked up the Companion Cube and walked through the portal on the bottom floor.

Chell exited out of the higher portal close to where the first platform was.  She walked to the edge and hopped onto it.

So far, so good.  However, the cube was slightly obstructing her vision; she would have to move it so she could see the distance between platforms.

There was a greater space between them than the minor gap she had just jumped.  But, it didn't look like it'd be too much of a problem.

She hopped to the next one without any troubles and easily leapt from there over to the third.

From here, there was a hallway to the right, with the ground level below the top of the platform.  Because it was lower, it'd be an easier jump to make.

After she decided how to approach the gap, Chell jumped down into the hallway.

The hallway was made of metal.  After several feet, it turned to the right.  She walked down it and went around the corner.

A few feet in front of her were some stairs.  At the top of the staircase was an exit sign.  Was she close to the end of the test?

Chell walked up the stairs and into a small room with glass walls and ceiling and a concrete floor.  In the middle of the floor was a red button.

On the other side of the room were also some stairs that went down into another small room.  On the wall she could see of this room was a door that seemed to be connected to the button at her feet, but it didn't have an exit sign.

She dropped the cube on top of the button to see what would happen.

As soon as the cube hit the button, the voice spoke, "You did it!  The Weighted Companion Cube certainly brought you good luck.  However, it cannot accompany you for the rest of the test and, unfortunately, must be euthanized.  Please escort your Companion Cube to the Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator."

Ah, this must be what the person had written about, the great tragedy that befell the Companion Cube.  It didn't make much sense to incinerate the cube; it couldn't pass through the Grid.  Why not leave it for the next test person?  It seemed a waste.

Oh well.  The doors across the way had opened up, so Chell headed down the stairs and into the next room.

The left wall of the room held the exit door.  The right side of the room consisted of a giant, circular object that had a tiny opening in the middle.  Around the top of the rim of the object it said 'CAUTION' in faint letters.

Below this object were two lit squares on the ground.  The first one was the picture of the stick figure holding the Companion Cube, however this time the heart was broken.  The square to the right of it showed the circular object with a large flame coming out of it and an exclamation mark in the upper right corner.

That must be the incinerator, but if fire came out of the top, she didn't want to get too close.  But, everything was made of metal, so she couldn't use portals to dump the cube.

To the incinerator's left was a window that had a stick with a button on top behind it.  That must be how to operate it.

Chell walked through the door to the small room and stood at the window.  She reached out her left hand and pressed the button.

The incinerator opened and clouds of steam were rushing out of it.  She heard a ticking noise that meant she didn't have much time.  

Chell rushed out of the room and up the stairs.  She then grabbed the cube off of the button and hurried back down, making her way towards the incinerator.

In front of the gaping maw, the heat was oppressive.  Chell hit the button on the portal gun and dropped the Companion Cube into the unforgiving flame pit below.

As the cube tumbled in, the voice addressed her, "You euthanized your faithful Companion Cube more quickly than any test subject on record.  Congratulations."

She turned around and found that the doors behind her were now open.  She made her way down the short hallway, through the Grid and onto the elevator.

Chell leaned against the back wall of the elevator as the doors closed and it headed to the next destination.

That had been quite an interesting test.  Thinking back on the scribblings of the person before her and how the mourned the loss of the Companion Cube, was that what the previously mentioned 'grief counseling' was for?

It hadn't bothered her, though.  It was just a cube.  But, she could see how a person who believed the cube talked, among other things if the writings were to be believed, would be traumatized by throwing it into the fire.

She hadn't seen the other person, so they must have finally gone on to the next chamber at some point in time.  Maybe she'd see them when she got there, who knew.


	19. Chamber 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the nineteenth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the [NUMBER] chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.
> 
> Yet again, I fear the flow of the chapter has a huge section about a Ratman den cluttering it up.

It didn't take long for the elevator to get to the next chamber.  When the doors open, Chell glanced out to see what she could find out about this test.

All she could see about the next test was that the wall some distance in front of her was made of metal and that there was some sort of gap between this area she was standing on and the area close to the metal wall.

Chell walked out of the elevator and down the dimly-lit concrete corridor.  

As she traveled down the path, a familiar stench grew stronger.

When she got close to the doorway to the test, the voice spoke, "The experiment is nearing its conclusion.  

The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that you will be baked and then there will be cake."

Chell looked puzzled at this comment.  She was going to be the one that was baked?  That couldn't be right; it had to be another glitch by the computer.

But, what if it was true?  The person before seemed to indicate that something was going on here.

There was nothing she could do about it for now.  When the time came, she didn't plan on being cooked, she'd come up with a way out.  

After all, she did have the portal gun.  If things looked fishy at the end, she would refuse to give it up until after she was outside safely, cake or not.

She walked out into the next room.  

Right to the left of the doorway was an information board.  Every square but the final one with the cake was highlighted.

This would be an interesting test, deadly liquid, Pellets, and evil robots all in one conglomeration.

She'd have to be on her toes and think quickly to get through this mess.

On the ground, close to the edge and where she was standing, was a lit up square showing a stick figure dying in water.  Chell looked over the edge and confirmed that the bottom of the gap was full of the toxic sludge.

The entire area across the way was made of metal, except for the ceiling.  So, she'd just have to drop in from there.

She placed a portal close to the edge, but not too close, of the ceiling across the way.  Then, she put a portal under her feet and fell through.

It was a long drop, but the springs bounced and cushioned the fall.

Once she was steady, she got to looking around.

She was facing the back wall of this section of the chamber.  To her right was a gap in the floor.  Unlike the previous gap, this one had a tall section of concrete wall on the other side.  Presumably, the floor continued from the top of this wall, she could see an observation window along the left wall.

But, all the area around her, except for the ceiling, was made of metal.  There also was a concrete ceiling above the tall wall.

Chell walked over to the edge and looked down into the gap.  It was also filled with the noxious liquid.

Getting to the top of the wall was going to be tricky.  She could see only one way to do it, but if she messed up, she would be killed.

She glanced around, trying to see if there was anything else that could help her.  When she looked at the left side of the wall, Chell was surprised to see that there was a good-sized hole in it with some kind of room beyond.

A closer look revealed that the person previous had been here, there was a handprint on one of the metal blocks closest to the inside.  Maybe there'd be something useful in there.

The hole wasn't big enough for her to walk through and the room was made of some kind of metal so she couldn't just use a portal to get through.  However, if she crouched down, she could make her way through, it just wasn't very comfortable.

Once she was inside, she stood up, stretching slightly as she did so.  Then she got to checking the place out.

It was quite a good deal larger than the other hidden rooms she had found.  It's possible that both could fit in the room with some space left over.

The middle of the floor had a rectangular hole in it.  There was a fence surrounding it, so that somebody couldn't just fall in.  Chell looked down and saw that the deadly ooze was slowly swirling around in the bottom of the pit; no wonder the smell in this room was as bad as in the previous area.

To her right was two of the grey rectangles on the floor, and to her left was just one.  Looking closer, Chell realized that it was possible they were sections of the metal wall.  The person who had made this cubby probably had taken them out of the wall to make the entrance and just left them around for later use.

Also to the right was a metal staircase that lead to an upper floor.  

As she looked up at the higher section, Chell saw that there was another large fan in the wall across from where she was.  Being lower than it, it allowed her to get a different look.  She could see light coming from behind it, but it was a uniform white.  There must be a window or something that made it look that way.  It didn't make much sense, as most fans needed empty space behind them to work correctly.  Maybe they had some other way of getting it to operate properly.

On the left, there was just a pathway going around the pit in the middle.  She decided to walk around that way first.

Chell clambered over the removed section of wall in her way and followed the path around the pit.

There wasn't anything of interest until she got close to the staircase.  In front of it was an empty water jug.

On the walls close to the jug, Chell could see red writing and a poster.  The rusted metal of the walls made it a little harder to read, so she'd need to get closer in order to fully make out what had been written.

On the back wall, behind the jug, were three white pipes going upwards.  One seemed to have a warning label on it.  Did these pipes direct and transport the sludge?

As she walked past that part of the wall, Chell saw an empty can of beans next to the jug.  At least the person had been able to find food here as well.

The section of wall next to the pipes had a couple of drawings in red.  

The first was nearly identical to one she had seen before; it was a drawing of a camera and said 'SHE'S WATCHING YOU'.  To the right and below that was a sketch of a round object with a single candle in the middle of it.  That must be a cake.  However, around the cake was a circle with a line through it, crossing the cake out.  The other person must be certain that there wasn't any cake, they were quite hung up on the idea that it didn't exist.  Chell was getting pretty hungry; she hoped it wasn't a lie, just so she could have something to eat.  The final thing on this wall was a poster to the right of the camera drawing, it was the 'Not Never But NOW' one she had seen before.

On the floor close to this wall were another couple of flattened cardboard boxes with a seat cushion at the top of one.  At least the person before had been able to make a bed here, they hadn't in the previous test.

The small section of the right wall connected to the back had only two things on it.  One was a poster in the upper middle.  It showed a stick figure with their hands on their hips.  Flying straight at their head was a Pellet.  Underneath this was the words 'Courage Is Not The Absence of Fear'.  The words on the poster were true, judging by the picture, stupidity was the absence of fear.  If the Pellets could vaporize you, then standing directly in their path would get yourself killed, courage or not.  Below the poster was the word 'Help' written in red.

The next portion of wall held three more pipes.

It was close to here that the stairs connected to the upper level.  In front of the metal shelf that helped to hold the stairs in place were a couple of sections of wall.  Interestingly, one was placed vertically instead of horizontally.  In between the two pieces of removed wall was an upside down bucket.

On the metal section that was connected to the stairs was what looked to be part of a computer with a frying pan on top of it.

She could see that in the space past the staircase an empty can and milk carton were lying on their sides.  It looked like the other person had gotten some food, but not as much as they had in the previous chambers.

Since there wasn't anything else to investigate, Chell turned back and went to the foot of the stairs.

The stairs were metal and looked worn, like most everything else in the room.  There were handrails that went along both sides of the stairs and along the upper walkway; it became guardrails to keep people from falling off.

Chell grabbed a handrail with each hand and carefully tested the stairs to make sure they would hold her up.

The stairs appeared stable, so she cautiously made her way up them, testing each stair and keeping a good grip on the handrails.

The metal walkway made a rectangle above the pit full of sludge.  On the wall furthest away from the stairs was a white door.

Chell made a beeline for the door, curious as to where it would lead.  However, when she got over to it, she discovered that it didn't have a doorknob or handle to open it with.  There was markings and a hole to show where one had been at some point, but it was long gone.

The door was pretty scuffed and scratched up.  Had the previous person removed the doorknob?

Chell pushed on the door and tried to get her finger in the hole to open the door, but didn't have any luck, the door was closed tightly.  Oh well.

She walked back along the metal pathway and went down the stairs.  She turned and walked past them, heading towards the entrance to this room.  Chell made her way over the piece of wall blocking her path, then hunched over and carefully walked through the low opening.

It was time to get back to work solving this test; she had spent enough time dawdling around.

She looked over the gap and to the imposing wall behind it.  There was only one way over this thing.  She fired a portal lower than the area she was standing on, but not too close to the nasty liquid below.

Then, Chell looked up and fired a portal onto the section of concrete ceiling, not too close to the wall, in case there were any nasty surprises ahead.  She didn't like not being able to see what she was going to get into.

She took a deep breath, then jumped out across the pool, landing neatly into the portal, then fell face first onto the platform below.

It was a good thing she had been careful about where she had placed the portal.  Too much to the side, and she would have fallen into the sludge.  It had been close enough as it was.

On the ground, close to where she had landed, was a lit square with two dots on it.  She turned to her left and saw that above a platform located higher up than where she was was a lit square with three dots.  That was her next destination.

The ceiling above the platform was concrete, but nothing else around it was.  She'd have to drop in on that one as well.

Since it appeared to be flush with the wall, Chell placed a portal on the ceiling close to the wall.  Then, she put a portal underneath her and fell through, landing on her feet onto the platform.

Looking up and around, Chell saw that against the wall to her right and a good distance above her was a platform made out of metal blocks.  There was some kind of power line connected to something up there, but she couldn't tell what.

The ceiling was metal, so she couldn't just fall onto it.  However, to the left of the platform, along the wall, was a section that had a lit square with four dots.  That had to be the next point for her to get to.

She walked over closer to the right wall in order to get a better look at where she was supposed to go.

Over where it had indicated the fourth step was, there were only a few things Chell could see.  For starters, it looked like the entire area was close to the walls.  Next, the power line from the other platform went over to something up there.  The wall opposite her was made of concrete, and there was a small section of extended concrete up near the ceiling.

Since the wall was concrete, Chell put a portal as low as she could.  Then, she fired a portal onto the ground underneath her and fell through.

It was quite disorienting, as she came out of the portal feet-first and landed on her back when she fell to the ground.

She picked herself up and looked to see where she had landed.

The platform across the way had a red button on the floor and a doorway behind that.  She followed the power line with her eyes, turning around behind her to discover a closed exit door.

So, she needed to get up to the button and probably go through the doorway to get a cube.  It shouldn't be too bad.  The hard part was figuring out how to get to the higher platform.  She knew there was a raised piece of concrete for her to fling herself from, but how would she build up momentum to get across?

Chell walked to the edge of the platform and looked down.  Below was another concrete platform.  So, she could use that as her entry point and hope that it would launch her far enough.

She turned around and placed a portal on the section of concrete closest to the wall.  Then she looked back to the lower platform and jumped off.  When she was close to hitting it, Chell fired a portal below her feet and fell through it.  She flew through the air with her face looking towards the ceiling and landed on her back up on the higher platform.

She recovered for a moment, then stood up.  She'd try the button and see if she could just portal out.  Chell stood on the button, but all the area through the door was metal, so she'd have to obtain a cube to hold it open for her.

Chell turned around and went through the doorway.  As soon as she did, there was a burst of gunfire and the sound of glass cracking.  She stopped and peered to the left, the hallway turned that direction.  There was a glass pane that now had several bullet markings in it.  Great, she'd found the robots.

She cautiously made her way around the corner, verifying that there was at least one robot in the room beyond as it fired rapidly at the window.

The room she was in was tiny; to the left was a silver horizontal pillar and a button on a stick.  Considering that there was a window that looked out to a new room, the button probably opened the way, extending the pillar or something to make a hole she could get through.

Chell went over to the window to peer through.  It was hard to see around the cracks that the robot was continuously making as it was trying to blast her.  She saw that over to the right, the floor ended, so she'd have to make her way to the left and hope the robots didn't shoot her.  Maybe there was cover over there.  Also to the right was a Pellet dispenser.  Straight across, leading off the floor, was an Unstationary Scaffold.  It looked like there was something across the room, so she'd have to activate it to get there.

Well, there wasn't anywhere else to go but in there, so Chell walked over to the button and pressed it.  She watched as the piece of all attached to the silver pillar went forward and tilted up.  There was a ticking noise, so she knew she didn't have much time.

She used the wall as cover as much as she could; she walked along quickly beside the pillar, turning to walk under the wall.  She followed the wall, looking to the left, trying to find something to hide behind.

There was a small pillar sticking up out of the ground that had a button on a stick.  That'd have to do for now.  Chell ran out, focusing only on her goal.  She stopped behind the pillar, luckily, as she had run, the robot hadn't noticed her.  Since she was safe, it was time to see what she could figure out about this room.

First of all, the pillar she was standing behind was quite a bit taller than her.  How would she get to the button on top of it?

Next, on the back wall, behind where she was standing, was an enclosed Pellet catcher.  She cautiously looked around to the front of it and found that there was a door she'd have to open to access it.  Most likely, it'd be like that other room where she had to press two buttons to open the doors.  Luckily, it looked like this one was only blocked by one door.

Now for the rest of the room.  She peered out from behind the pillar to look across the way.

There was a lot going on in this room, it was hard to know where to begin with it all.  Well, for starters, the Pellet dispenser was activated.  It would release a Pellet, the Pellet would bounce back and forth, then once the Pellet exploded, it would rotate and release another one.  There were indentions on the walls, from where the Pellets had impacted.  Several feet ahead, on the wall to her left, was one of the small craters.  The dispenser had only just been activated, so they couldn't have been from her just standing here.  Apparently the people before her had let them bounce for a long time.  This was the first time she had encountered such deep holes left by the Pellets.  Even as sturdy as concrete was, the Pellets were still able to wear it down after a while.

Most of the room consisted of a deep pit that had the noxious liquid in the bottom of it.  The only sections of floor that she could see was the area she was standing on and two different cubbies in the wall across the room.

There also were four platforms raised to different heights that were scattered around the room.  Each platform had a robot on top of it.  Two of the robots were facing the right wall and two were facing the back wall.

There was a platform with a robot close to Chell's hiding place.  There was another one, the one that had shot at the glass, that was close to the edge of the floor Chell was standing on.  Another robot and platform was diagonal from that one and looked to be close to the right wall.  Finally, the fourth robot was stationed on a platform close to the right side of the side of the room Chell was on.

She'd investigate this side of the room first, but before she did that, she needed to get rid of the robots.  If the Pellets caused people to vaporize, chances were that they'd vaporize the robots too.

It would be easy to target the robots; each one had their laser sighted on the wall across from them.  All Chell would have to do is place a portal where the lasers were shining, and the Pellet would hit the robots in the eye.

She decided to start with one of the ones closest to her.  Chell placed a portal on the right wall, in line with the robot that was close to the area she was standing on.  Next, she placed a portal on the Pellet impact crater that was on the wall to her left.  All she had to do was wait until the Pellet dispenser rotated and sent out a Pellet in the right direction.

It wasn't long before the Pellet came flying out and hit the robot.  Instead of vaporizing it, the Pellet knocked the robot off its perch.  As it fell towards the bottom of the room, firing wildly, it said, "Self-test error."

One robot down, three left to go.

Chell decided to go for the one closest to her next, as it was pointing at the same wall the other one had been.  She put a portal where it was aiming and waited.  The Pellet dispenser was going to come around to where she had placed the portal on the Pellet impact site, so she just left the portal there.  She could afford to wait a little bit and make sure that it worked right.

After several moments, the Pellet came and bumped off the second robot.  It fired bullets randomly, saying, "Malfunctioning." when it was done.

She then aimed a portal across from the robot that was further away.  The spot it was aiming at on the back wall was extended out slightly.  That was unusual, but she didn't really see any way she could investigate it.

After a short wait, the Pellet flew out of the portal and hit the third robot.  It fired crazily, declaring, "Ow ow ow." as it did so.

Only one robot left.  It was pointing at a spot directly under where the other had been, so Chell placed a portal at that location and waited.  Shortly, the Pellet went through one portal and came out the other, hitting the last robot and flinging it to the pool below.  It fired a stream of bullets, said, "Critical error." and then was done.

Now that the room was safer, Chell could give it a better look-through.  She walked out from behind the pillar, heading towards the right side of the ground she was on.

The platform she was on was long and followed the wall.  Only the part across from where she had entered and a little to the right stuck out towards the middle of the room.  In the middle of this section was an Unstationary Scaffold that currently wasn't moving.

Across the way, on the other side of the room were two sections nestled in the wall.  One was higher than the other.

The upper section contained a cube on the ground and a cube in the cylinder attached to the ceiling, while the lower section just seemed to have a button on a stick.  Both sections were entirely made out of metal, so she couldn't just used portals to get there and back.  The higher portion looked like it might be too high to jump up on from the Scaffold.  But, how would she get there?

There was a power line leading from the button on the other side of the room, so she traced it with her eyes and found it went back to the section she had entered from.

So, that was the way out.  But, that still didn't get her to the cube.

However, the door opened up at an angle.  If she could find a way to fling herself and build up momentum, she could use the door to send her to the upper part of the room.  But, where could she fling herself from?  The floor was made of the deadly liquid; jumping into it would just kill her.

Chell walked around the edge, looking over every part of the room to try and figure this mystery out.  

As she walked along the right side of her small area, she noticed that down below, right at the liquid's surface, was a small rectangle platform made of concrete.  She could use that to jump down and launch herself off of the tilted doorway and over to the cube.

Only one thing was left for her to figure out, and that was how to get the Pellet into the collector.  Chell walked back over to the enclosed collector to get a better look at the situation.

The button to activate the door that lead to the Pellet collector was too high to reach.  But, there was an extra piece of wall sticking out behind it.  If she used portals, she might be able to reach the button.  However, the extra piece of wall wasn't directly behind the button, there was a gap between it and the floor.  If she wasn't careful, she'd fall to her death below.

Well, she could try portals and see what it looked like.  If she wasn't happy with the situation, she could just try something different.

First, Chell put a portal onto the wall next to the tall pillar.  Then, she turned around and placed a portal on the section of wall directly across from the button.  She then walked over and looked through the lower portal.

Sure enough, there was the button, it almost looked close enough to reach out and touch.  Chell knew otherwise though.

She took a deep breath and stepped through the portal slowly.  Chell found herself standing on the edge of the portal, half in and half out.  If she kept her balance and was careful, she could stay perched here.  But, that wouldn't accomplish what she needed.  

So, she jumped off from where she was standing and outstretched her left arm.  Her hand hit the button as she fell downwards, landing next to the pillar.

The door in front of the Pellet collector opened for a few brief seconds, then rapidly closed.

Well, that was a pain.  She'd have to get the Pellet through the portals and on the way to the collector before she made the portals to get to the button.  She wouldn't have long and would have to move quickly in order to get it done.

So, she looked across to try and figure out where best to place the portal for the Pellet to exit from.

On the other side of the room, directly across the way, was a small section of wall that was extended out from the rest of the wall.  If she stood in front of the box the Pellet collector was in and looked out, it looked like the middle of the outstretched segment was in line with the collector.

Having found what seemed to be the right spot, Chell put a portal there.

Next, she placed a portal at the impact crater on the wall to the right.  Since it was closer, she'd be able to watch and see exactly when the Pellet entered.  She'd need all the time she could get to place down two more portals and jump through to activate the button.

Now that the portals were in place, she stood to the side of the pillar, next to the wall.  That way, she could just step through and save a little bit of time.

It took several moments for the Pellet to be released in the direction Chell needed it to.  As soon as it entered the portal, she placed two new portals.  One was on the wall in front of the button, the other onto the wall next to her.

Chell jumped through the portal and slapped her hand on the button, opening the door.  It was open for several seconds, then the Pellet slid on through and hit the collector.

There was a hiss of electricity and a hum from the Unstationary Scaffold as it started on its way across the room.

Chell walked over to the landing point on this side and waited for the Scaffold to come back.  While she stood there, she was thinking about her next move.  On the other side was the button that would activate the door, the one she needed to launch herself off of.  It had closed after several moments when she had activated it from the other side, so likely it would do the same again.  So, she needed a way to get back over quickly, before it closed.  At the moment, she didn't know how she'd accomplish that, but maybe something across the room would show itself when she got there.

The Scaffold drew near and paused for a moment at the landing.  Chell stepped on and rode it out over to the other side.

It was a quick trip, once it paused near the two small rooms recessed into the wall, Chell jumped off into the lower one.

The first order of business here was to hit the button and see how long the door would stay open.  She hit the button with her left hand, then turned around to watch.

The door slowly slid open and stayed that way for quite a few seconds.  It wasn't as long as she had hoped it would be, but it could be worse.

Now, she just had to find a quick way back across, then she'd be good to go.  Chell turned back around and went to investigate what was all in the tiny room.  

The room widened out on both sides back behind the entrance.  On the wall on each side was a small section of concrete above two small stairs.  She could use those to get back to the other side.  Chell placed a portal on the one to her right and then looked back out across the way.

Chell then placed a portal above the window.  She had seen previously that when the walls moved, the portals disappeared, so she put it as close to the extending wall as she dared.

She then backed up as far as she could and still reach the button.  Chell quickly pressed it and then ran up the small stairs and through the portal.

Once she was on the other side, the wall finished getting into place.  Chell rapidly placed a portal on it, then ran over to the edge and jumped off.  When she got close to the platform above the water, she placed a portal under her feet and fell through. 

Chell flew out of the portal on the angled wall feet-first.  She sailed across the room and landed with a bump in the section where the cube was located.

She lied on her back for a moment, resting and recovering.  Chell then got up and looked over the room.  The entire thing was made of metal, so the only way back across would be to ride the Scaffold over.

So, she picked up the cube with the portal gun and stood at the edge, waiting for the scaffold to come back.

Once it did so, she jumped down and it took her back across the room.  When it paused, she got off and dropped the cube on the ground close to the window.  That way, it'd be out of her way.

Chell walked back over and waited for the Scaffold to come back.  While she waited, she turned around and put a portal above the window.  This would save her some time coming back this way.

Once the Scaffold stopped for a moment, she got on and it took her back to the other side of the room.  It paused once more and Chell hopped off down to the lower section in the wall.

She walked to the back of the room and fired a portal at the right side, where the concrete was.  Once it was in place, she went over and pressed the button.

The door started to slide open, so Chell quickly walked up the stairs and through the portal.

Chell fell out of the portal near the door and walked the few steps it took to get to the cube.  She grabbed the cube with her portal gun and turned around to walk through the opening the door had now provided.

It was a bit of a tight fit, but Chell lifted the cube up and over the silver pillar and walked into the other room.

It was only a few steps to get out of the room and arrive at the button.  Chell dropped the cube on the button, and the door on the other side of the room opened.  Was this the end of the test, or would there be more beyond the door?

The platform she was on was made of metal, so she couldn't just use portals from here.  But, she looked down and saw a platform below.  She could go down there and use a portal there.

Chell put a portal next to the door.  Then, she hopped off the platform and down to the one below.

The wall next to the platform was made of concrete, so she put a portal there and walked through, appearing right next to the door.

Chell turned around and walked through the doorway.  There was no Grid or elevator in sight; instead, she saw silver pillars, metal walls, and more toxic sludge ahead.

She made her way down the hallway and jumped down the small distance to the floor below.

Directly to her right was a gap in the floor, so Chell went to investigate.

Far, far down in the bottom of the gap was a concrete floor.  There was nothing else around and the walls were made of metal.  Only the ceiling and floor were concrete.

Chell hadn't seen a fall that far in all of the tests here.  Likely she'd have to use the long fall to fling herself somewhere in the other room.

She left the pit and walked back over to see what the other section had in store for her.

The other room was tall and open, with metal walls and ceiling.  The floor contained the disgusting liquid that had been prevalent throughout this whole test chamber.

Not too far from where she was standing was a small concrete platform several feet above the deadly floor.

Behind that was another platform, except it was raised up on silver pillars quite a distance higher.  Beyond that one, up against the wall, was yet another platform, a little bit higher than the second one.

On the wall to the left was another platform, higher still than the previous ones.   To the left of it, in the corner of the left wall closest to the doorway Chell was standing in, was another platform that was raised up close to the ceiling.  On the wall opposite it was a tilted platform.

Chell looked over the situation with a sigh.  It seemed like she was going to have to bounce from one section to the other, placing portals on each one, then finally flinging across to the highest point.

She hadn't encountered anything quite like this before, so she'd have to be careful to not mess up and send herself falling into acid.

Chell placed a portal on the lowest platform, then walked back to the deep pit.  She took a breath, then dove off, flying face first towards the ground.

When she got closer to the bottom, she fired a portal at where she was going to meet the ground.

She fell through the portal, then found herself being flung straight up in the air.  It was almost like flying.

She was a little disoriented from the sensation, so she missed the platform she needed to place a portal on.  That wouldn't be a problem though, she just let herself fall back through the portal, come out of the one in the pit, then fall back through and go flying upwards in the main room again.

This time, she was ready for it and when she reached the apex of her flight, Chell placed a portal on the first of the higher platforms, falling back down through the portal below her.

Her feet came out of the portal first, making her look down at an odd angle to aim the next shot.  Since the next platform was right behind the one she had just launched off of, it was easy to find and land a portal on.

Chell fell face first through the portal and flew out of the next one high into the air.  The next platform was close to the wall on the left.

It took a moment for Chell to situate herself to look at the next platform, but by that time, it was already too high up, and she fell back through the portal and came flying out of the lower one.

She made sure to keep her orientation, so that she'd still be facing the platform when she needed to.  Chell fell back through the portal and out of the higher one.

This time, she was able to place a portal on top of it.  When she fell back through the portal, Chell came out of the other one with her feet up in the air.  This would make it harder to target the next section.

She was having problems figuring out which way she was facing in the room.  Things got swapped around when she flew out of the portals because she was right side up sometimes and upside down the other times.

It took her one round of flying up out of the portal and falling back through to be launched out of the other to find the next target.

It was the diagonally tilted piece of wall; she was almost to the end of this mess.

She tilted the gun upwards and placed a portal on the slanted wall.  Chell then readjusted herself to fall neatly through the portal below and then fly out from the portal on the tilted platform face-first.

Chell was sent out of the portal rapidly and found herself face-to-face with the opposite wall. She turned around and to the ground with her back against the wall.  She rubbed her forehead because of the pain from the impact.

The voice spoke to her, "Well done!  Be advised that the next test requires exposure to uninsulated electrical parts that may be dangerous under certain conditions.  For more information, please attend and Enrichment Center Electrical Safety seminar."

As Chell recovered from slamming into the wall, she thought about this piece of news.  Likely the conditions in the next test would make the electrical parts dangerous.  That meant she was probably at risk for some kind of electrical shock.  She'd just have to keep her eyes open for anything that looked like it could cause injury.

She stayed sitting down long after her body healed.  She was dizzy from flying up and down out of the portals and it took her a while to get readjusted.

Once Chell was feeling back to normal, she got up and turned to her left.  The Grid and elevator was located only a few steps away, so she passed through and got into the elevator.

As she waited for the doors to close and the elevator to start, she realized that there was only one test left.  After she completed it, she hoped there would be something to eat and drink and a way out of here.

Though, the person that had come before her had said the cake was a lie.  She'd find out soon enough whether or not this was true.


	20. Chamber 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the twentieth level in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the twentieth chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was part of my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and has only a few changes made from the original version I wrote. This was the last chapter that was part of NaNoWriMo, once I finished it, I took a break from writing the novelization for a few months.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened.  The hallway in front of Chell was fairly short.  There was an unlit information board on the wall across from where she was standing, then the hallway turned off to the right.

Chell exited the elevator and walked towards the board to see what would be in store for her for the final test.  Since it was the last one, likely it was going to have all the hazards and be worse than the last couple of chambers.

As she neared the board, the voice spoke to her, "Welcome to the final test!  When you are done, you will drop the Device in the equipment recovery annex...  Enrichment Center regulations require both hands to be empty before any cake..."  There was a glitch on the word cake, there was a distorted noise that sounded like something being rewound, then the voice said, "cake" several times rapidly.

This new revelation could cause her some problems.  Upon reading the writings from the person before her, Chell had decided to keep the portal gun in case something went wrong and she needed to get out.  If she had to give it up before a way out was provided, then she could be trapped here.  She'd give up the cake if need be, in order to exit.  She hoped there'd actually be a person she could talk to, instead of a disembodied voice that tended to have problems at the most inconvenient times.

She'd figure out what to do after the test was complete.  Chell turned her attention to the board.

Strangely enough, only five of the ten squares were lit.  The last three on the top row were highlighted; they were the two about the Pellets and the one showing a stick figure in the deadly liquid.  The two on the bottom were the one warning against drinking the water and, most important of all, the cake square was finally lit.

This was it, the last barrier between her and something to eat and her freedom.  She better get to work.  

Even though there weren't as many hazards in this test, it was probably going to be tricky in its own right.

Chell rounded the corner and was greeted by the sound of a Pellet bouncing around.  

Across the room, on the ground, were two slanted floor sections.  Above the section on the left was the Pellet dispenser and above the one on the right was the collector.

A blue power line extended from the collector and across the ceiling.  Chell followed it with her eyes and found that it connected to an Unstationary Scaffold near where she had entered.

The Scaffold, when activated, would follow a path around this room above a pool of the toxic liquid.  It went straight back towards the wall on the right.

However, in the middle of the path she could see was a large, horizontal silver pillar holding up a section of wall.  It would be in her way once she got on to ride the scaffold.

Looking closer, Chell saw that at the end of this part of the hallway was a small platform in the corner.  She'd be able to place a portal there and avoid the pillar entirely.

She could see that the Scaffold's pathway continued somewhere to her right.  There was a window of the room she was in that might show her where it went.

Chell made her way over to the window and looked out.  Sure enough, she could see the dim glow of the unactivated Scaffold path.  Directly in front of her, in a cubby in the wall, was a button on a stick.

She briefly wondered what the button activated, until she looked to her right.  There was a door blocking the pathway.  She'd have to use the button to open the door.

Chell looked back to the room she was in.  Behind the tilted pieces of floor was a window that presumably showed the continued path the Scaffold would follow.  Bouncing against the window was a Pellet; she'd have to redirect it somewhere out of her way so it wouldn't kill her.

So far, the things to come in the test didn't look so bad.  She had gotten as much of a preview as she could get, so she watched the Pellet, trying to figure out how to get it in the collector.

The Pellet would bounce off the tilted floor piece, then hit the metal wall, and back to the section of the floor, and then finally hit the dispenser.  It would bounce multiple times before exploding.

The wall directly across from the second section of floor was also made of metal, so she'd have to redirect the Pellet somehow.  Since it could survive multiple bounces, what if she put a portal on the second floor piece, then moved it?  It would then bounce off the wall, then the floor section, and to the collector, if all went well.

That seemed like the best course of action, so, Chell started off by placing a portal on the first section of floor, where the Pellet bounced off of.  Then, she placed a portal on the second floor piece.

The Pellet rapidly bounced into the portal and out of the other one, striking the wall and flying back through the portal across to the other wall.

Chell waited until it entered the portal again, as soon as the Pellet did so, she removed the portal from the second floor section.  The Pellet, after it bounced off the wall, bounced against the tilted piece of floor and up to the collector.

There was a crackle of electricity as the collector caught the Pellet.  Chell then heard a hum and a beep as the Unstationary Scaffold started on its path.

Chell walked back over and looked out across where the Scaffold would go.  She placed a portal on the wall by the platform in the corner, then put a portal to the wall on her left and stepped through.

She landed on metalwork grill platform and the Scaffold sailed underneath it, turning the corner and starting to head down the next part of the hallway.

Chell turned as well to look down that way.  She could see a piece of the wall of the cubby where the button was, so she placed a portal there and stepped back through the one she had arrived on the platform from.

The button was close to her, so she stepped over to it and pressed it.  There was a click as the door opened, then seconds later a buzzer sounded.  Did she only have a handful of seconds to work the door?

She turned around and saw the door was finishing closing.  Chell got as far away from the button as she could and still press it, then quickly reached over to hit it with her hand.  She then rapidly turned around and looked around the corner.  

She could see another spot where the Scaffold would turn to go down the hallway to the right.  Chell quickly fired a portal there, right as the door closed again.

Chell looked over at the portal she had walked through to get to this point.  She could see the glowing light that indicated where the platform would glide down the hallway.  She could wait here for the Scaffold to come gliding past.

The Scaffold she had originally started with was nowhere in sight, she'd have to wait for another one to come down the path.  

Chell had to wait a couple of minutes before another one showed up.  It slid past where she was standing and made its way under the door.  Once it got to where she was looking out to, Chell hopped through the portal and landed safely onto the moving platform.

She quickly turned to face down the hallway; the Pellet bouncing against the window was coming up fast.

Chell rapidly fired a portal at the spot it was impacting against the wall.  Once the Pellet blasted through it, she placed both portals at a point below where she was riding, just in case.  The Pellet thankfully didn't reappear and she continued riding the platform.

It kept going down the hallway and turned again at a corner.  This time, the obstacle in the path was a solid wall.

Chell could see that around to the right was an exit sign, she was almost there.  She quickly placed a portal close to the sign.  She had one idea and hoped it would work.

Next, she put a portal on the wall a little ahead of the Scaffold.  Once it got to her selected section, she carefully stepped through, gripping the edge of the portal with her toes and reaching out her left hand to steady herself.

Chell stayed balanced between the two portals, standing on nothing more than the tiny piece of floor the bottom of the portal made.  It wasn't comfortable, but she didn't have to stay there long, the platform was coming near.

Once it was directly in front of her, Chell jumped onto it and faced forward.  On the metal wall straight ahead was a lit up square showing the cake from the information board.  The air was starting to get a bit warmer.

The voice spoke, "Congratulations!  The test is now over."

The Scaffold turned the corner and Chell looked ahead to see a blazing pit of fire.

The voice continued, "All Aperture technologies remain safely operation up to 4,000 degrees Kelvin.  Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence.

Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity.

Goodbye."

While the voice had been informing her that she was going to be set on fire, the Scaffold had been slowly heading towards the unrelenting flames.  It was getting uncomfortably hot, but Chell had no intention of being burned alive if she could help it.

As soon as the Scaffold entered the flaming chamber, she started looking for a way out.

There!  Right across the way was a landing!  Chell quickly placed a portal on the wall opposite of her.

Next, she placed a portal on the wall to her right and jumped through the flames to land safely on the other side.

Chell rapidly moved the portals above her to reduce the heat coming at her.  It was bad enough from the front, it was even worse with the fire licking through the portal.

Take that!  She wasn't going to let herself be killed.

The voice addressed her once more, "What are you doing?  Stop it!  I...I...I..."  The voice stuck on the word "I" and repeated it faster and faster until the voice returned to normal.

"We are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you.  We are very, very happy for your success.  We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success.

Place the device on the ground then lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides.  A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party.

Make no further attempt to leave the testing area.

Assume the Party Escort Submission Position or you will miss the party."

Chell didn't plan on submitting to anybody, especially not after they tried to kill her.  It sounded like there really was somebody there; the voice was a person after all.  She wanted to have a word with the person behind the voice about trying to kill her, but her first priority was to get out of her as soon as possible.

How was she going to escape?


	21. Behind the Scenes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the "behind the scenes" area in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the twenty-first chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was written in April 2011, after I finished NaNoWriMo I took a break from working on it for a while.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.

The oppressive heat from the raging pit of fire Chell had just escaped made it difficult to concentrate.

She walked over to the wall in front of her, putting as much distance as she could between her and the flames.  She didn't have much time to think this through, it sounded as if someone or something was coming to find her.

There was a door to her left, but it didn't have a handle, only a keypad.  Chell walked over to it and tried to push the door open, but it didn't budge.  She'd have to find another way out.

Well, obviously, she couldn't go back the way she came and she was now in something of a dead end.  The only way to go was up.

Chell looked up towards the ceiling.  As she did so, something caught her eye across the way.  There looked to be a solid floor that had some cylindrical containers and pipes over there.  It was quite a distance up, but as Chell turned her gaze higher, the ceiling above her was even taller.

It would be risky, but it was possible she could set up the portals to fling herself across the death trap and into some kind of safety.  She didn't know what would be awaiting her up there, but it would be far better than standing around here and waiting to be caught or die.

Chell turned around and aimed a portal on the wall as close to the ceiling as she could.  She'd need all the height she could get, if she was going to make it across.

She then placed a portal on the wall to her left.  It'd be easier for her to see what she was doing if she could simply walk through it.

Chell made her way over to the portal on the wall and looked through.  She could see the fire pit far below, and more importantly, the other level that could possibly hold the way out quite a lesser distance below.

If she got enough of a portal fling going, Chell thought she could make it to the other side.  If she didn't make it, then it'd probably at least be a quick death as she burned to a crisp.

Chell inhaled, preparing herself for the fall, it was a long way down and she had to set this up just right.

She stepped out of the portal, as she fell down; Chell orientated herself so that she was falling front-side first towards the ground.  Once she was in position, she fired a portal directly below her.

Chell fell into the portal and flew out right-side up out of the higher portal.  She sailed across the fire pit and landed with a jolt on the other side.

It was much cooler up here, but Chell didn't have time to rest.  Breathing deeply, she looked around to see if there was somewhere else she could go.

In front of her was the two cylinder tanks that stretched back towards the wall.  The wall to her right was close and behind her was the pit of fire below.

However, to the left was a short hallway.  Chell walked around the pipes sticking out of the wall and headed down towards another tank.

Part of the way through the hall was three stairs, Chell dashed up them quickly.  If there was something coming after her, it might only take a short while for them to figure out where she had gone.  She had to get outside as soon as possible.

The room that the hallway lead to had the tank on the left side.  In the middle of the room was a rusted metal staircase that lead to a higher catwalk.  On the right side of the catwalk was a grey door.

Chell rushed over to the staircase and started to make her way up it.  The bottom two steps were falling off of the staircase, and when she put any weight on it, the entire bottom half simply fell off.

She exhaled a quick breath in irritation at this delay.  It would have been quicker to use portals to begin with, but in her hurry to escape, she had just simply jumped to action.  She'd have to be a bit more careful from now on.

She put a portal onto the wall right by where the stairs joined the catwalk.  Then, she turned around and fired a portal onto the wall now in front of her and walked through.

Once Chell was on the catwalk, she walked over to the door and, taking her left hand off of the portal gun, reached out and tried the metal handle.

The handle turned and she pushed the door open to find another room on the other side.

She was greeted by the sight of another rusted metal staircase directly across from her.  This one looked more stable, but she wasn't going to waste time trying it out.

The catwalk that the staircase seemed to lead to had another door with a keypad.  Likely, it wouldn't open for her.  However, to the right, there seemed to be an opening in the wall.  Nothing to do but to try it.

Chell placed a portal onto the wall to the left of the door.  Then, she turned and put a portal onto the wall directly to her left.  Once it was in place, she stepped through.

She tried the door, but it didn't move an inch when she pressed against it.  So, she turned towards the opening to the right and headed towards it.

Unfortunately, the opening was covered by a wire fence.  On the other side of the fence was a door with a handle.  There was a gate, but there was a padlock on it.  Chell tried shaking the gate, but, unlike the stairs, it held in place.

However, she noticed that the wall to the right of the door was concrete.  If she could place a portal there, she could easily get around the fence.  It didn't hurt to try, anyways, and it was the only way out.

Chell aimed for the 'Caution' sign on the wall.  The sign stated that 'The Equipment Stops and Starts Automatically.'  She'd have to watch out for any machinery.  The portal appeared on the wall, right where she wanted it, without any problems.  

Once the portal was placed, she walked back over to the portal by the door and stepped through.

Chell turned slightly and put her hand on the door's handle.  It turned, and she grinned slightly to herself.  This was going well.  She should be out of here in no time.

She opened the door and looked through to the room beyond.  

The next room was more open, there was a large, rotating fan on a circular hole on the wall across and to the left of where she was standing.

Chell walked across the metalwork on the floor, heading towards the fan.  There was a concrete wall behind it, so if there was anything beyond, she could use the portals to go around the fan.

As she approached the fan, the female voice once again spoke, "Hello?  Where are you?  I know you're there.  I can feel you here.  Hello?"

Chell hadn't seen any cameras around, not since that last test, so likely, the woman in charge had no clue where she was and was just bluffing.  Now, it was Chell's turn to have the upper hand.

While she was standing there, a familiar and dreadful smell assaulted her nose.  In between the rotating fan blades, she saw a sign on the wall, 'Danger Contaminated Area.'  It seemed to her that this might be the area where they created that noxious liquid that was present in quite a few of the tests.

There wasn't any other way she could go, though.  There was a metal floor on the other side of the fan, so Chell placed a portal on the concrete wall.

She turned to look around the room she was in.  There was another fan on the left side of the room; it looked identical to the one she was standing in front of.

The only area she could put a portal on was the floor.  That was a little annoying, but it was better than nothing.

Chell fired a portal onto the ground close to where she was standing and stepped through.

She fell out of the other portal feet-first and landed on her back.  She picked herself up and started to glance around the room.

There was a concrete ramp that led right down to the surface of the deadly liquid.  She didn't want to go that way.

Above the disgusting floor was a catwalk that seemed as if it stretched across the room.

On the other side of the room looked to have a stable floor that had a broken ramp going towards the floor.

There was a concrete wall across the way, so she could use that to get over there safely.

Chell fired a portal to the opposite side of the room, behind where the ramp was.  She then turned and walked through the portal she had previously fallen through.

There was a door immediately to her left.  She tried the handle, but it didn't move.

She exhaled in irritation, since the door was locked, she'd have to find another way out.

The catwalk had a small section that stuck out from the rest of it and it had no handrail right across from where she was standing.  However, it was too far away for her to simply jump across.  But, there was another way.

Chell turned around and saw that the ceiling was a bit of a distance above her.  It looked like it was possible that she could fling herself out of a portal there and land safely on the catwalk.

It was quite dangerous, if she missed, she'd find out just how deadly the floor was.

But, it was her only choice at the moment, so she'd just have to try.

Chell put a portal as close to the ceiling and to the wall on the right as she could, then placed one on the wall right in front of her.

She leaned forward as she stepped through the portal, making easier to readjust and face the ground when she fell.  As she fell towards the ground, she put a portal onto the floor beneath her and fell through.

Chell shot out of the upper portal and sailed neatly across, landing with only a little bump on her feet.

There was an open door to her left, so she pushed it aside slightly and made her way in.

This area was different from any of the others she had seen so far.  The floor was a black and orange checkerboard pattern.  The walls were still grey, but these were more scuffed and used than in the other areas.

To her right was a large glass window.  The room beyond it had several tables and rolling chairs.  There was a projector that was showing what appeared to be some kind of slideshow.  But, nobody was in it.  Curious, Chell read the slide that was up on the screen.

It read, 'Dollar$ and SENSE: Competing with BLACK MESA For DoD and Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts'.

Nothing too interesting so far, she wasn't familiar with a company called Black Mesa, but the rest of it was in line with this place being a testing ground for equipment, such as the portal gun.

The slide changed to a different one and this seemed like it could possibly explain her question, for it was titled, 'What is BLACK MESA?'  The rest of it read in bullet points, '2.59% of _ALL_ DoD contracts.  10 Billion in Federal Dollars Annually.  12% From Full  & Open Competition.   _88%_ From No-Bids or Excluded-Sources Bids.   ** _Not_** bound by Govt Performance  & Results Act.'

It looked like Black Mesa was quite profitable, probably to the irritation of whoever owned this place.  Chell was already liking this Black Mesa company.

The next slide appeared, this one had a chart comparing Aperture to Black Mesa, it was a 5 year review of GSA schedules.  Aperture had proposed that it needed quite a bit more funding than Black Mesa.  Black Mesa was awarded nearly, if not all, of the money they had requested, while Aperture only got a tiny portion of what even Black Mesa got.  It was likely that Aperture was having some kind of financial difficulties because of this.  That might explain why there only seemed to be one person working in the whole building, they may have fired everyone they possibly could.

The next slide clicked over.  This one had quite a few bullet points and was titled, 'A Case Study: Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System."  That must be their next project they would work on.  Chell continued reading, "Defense Logistics Agency solicits bids for development of fuel system icing inhibitor (FSII).  Black Mesa FSII proposal:  Costly - Black Mesa personnel overpaid given limited skillset/ambition.  Design inhibits ice, nothing more.  Aperture Proposal:  Less expensive, Bonuses to DLS: Aperture FSII inhibits ice but is also: A fully functioning Disk Operating System.  Arguably alive.'

That was puzzling, Aperture had somehow managed to come up with something that cost less than Black Mesa's idea and had an extra feature.  However, the 'arguably alive' part was a bit worrisome.  Was it Aperture's seeming insanity at work, or had they come up with some kind of living robot?  If she was lucky, maybe they hadn't been able to finish it and she wouldn't have to deal with it.

The next slide that appeared was the first one Chell had seen, so she turned back around to the room in front of her.  She had learned a little from that slideshow, but nothing that was any value to her right now and probably had just cost her valuable time.

The room had desks, chairs and computer equipment.  The wall to her right had shelves with seven computer towers on them.  To her left were two chairs in the corner and two long desks that looked towards a window that had a view of the room she had been in previously.  There were two chairs in front of one of the desks, one was upright and the other was leaning against the desk.  There were computer towers, keyboards, and mice on the desk and above it were two monitors with a yellow readout scrolling past.  Chell walked over to see if she could find any information that'd be useful for getting out of here.

The writing on the monitor was too tiny to read, so she didn't waste any time to trying to make it out.  She turned back to the room.  There was a door behind her with a chair in front of it.  Chell walked over to the door and turned the handle.  It gave way and she walked inside.

The room was tiny and felt crammed with things.  There were two chairs and a desk with computer equipment and a clipboard.  The clipboard had someone's records with a red FAILED stamp on it.  The person in question seemed to possibly be a chicken.  The computer screen here just showed the round symbol that seemed to be Aperture's logo.  The back of the room contained a window.

Chell glanced out it and found a familiar sight.  It was part of test 14, where she had had to wait for the platforms that rose up and down to cross a narrow room to get to where the pellet for that test was.

So, this is what it felt like to be looking down and watching people run through the tests was like.  However, there wasn't anyone around and she hadn't seen anyone watching her behind this window as she had gone through.

Well, that was enough of that, she turned back around and left this room, making her way down the larger one.

A short distance down was an open door to her right.  Chell walked in and found a room slightly larger than the one overlooking the 14th test.  

This room also had a desk with computer equipment, but the chair was toppled over.  To the left was another observation window, so Chell went to investigate.

This window overlooked another test, this time it was test 9, the so called 'impossible' one that wasn't.

Chell turned back around and left, there was only one other door, the one right across from the room she had just left.  Likely, it was the one that was locked from the other side.

She walked past the two chairs in the corner, one of which that had fallen over, and tried the handle on the door.  This time, it opened and revealed that it was in fact, the other room.

Having exhausted all possibilities from this room, Chell turned back around and made her way back to the catwalk.

The catwalk lead to an opening in the wall, so she walked across, heading towards another room.  

The catwalk looked out across the left into the new room.  A metal staircase leading down was a short distance away.

As Chell looked out over the room, she noticed on the wall on the opposite side was a drawing in red.  There was an arrow pointing upwards above a sketch of a stick figure going through a door.

It looked like the person before her had made it this far.  Odd that she hadn't seen any other signs of them until now, but it was good to have some kind of guide.  Maybe they had escaped and this would lead her to freedom.

Her eyes followed the direction of the arrow and Chell looked up.  Directly above her was another catwalk.  Nothing connected to it, but there were concrete walls up close to the ceiling.  Since the floor was concrete as well, she could use the portals to fling herself up there.

Chell put a portal up close to the ceiling then started to make her way down the stairs.  She paused at the landing and put a portal on the concrete wall to her left.  There were only two portions of wall that she could put portals on, and it made for more pleasant traveling to place them on the walls than the floor.

She walked through and fell towards the ground.  She placed a portal below her and angled herself to pop through face-first.

Chell came flying out of the upper portal and landed on the catwalk.  Right in front of her was a wire fence that had many pipes and an orange glow behind it.

The voice addressed her again, "What are you doing?  You haven't escaped, you know.  You're not even going the right way.  Hello?  Is anyone there?"

Whoever was there still didn't know where she was, so that was a good thing.  She still had the upper hand.

Chell turned around and looked at the new room she was in.  To her left seemed to be a dead end, but it looked like the other person had written 'Help' on the floor.  To the right was a staircase that lead upwards.

She walked over and started heading up the metal stairs.  It led to a dead end.  On the walls, there were four grimy handprints and 'the cake is a lie' written four times.

Oddly, there was a whooshing of air and as Chell looked around, she found a broken tube below the metal railing.  She watched for a moment and saw a cube go whizzing by.  It was the system that the cubes traveled along.  

She hopped over the metal fence and walked over to the hole.  Once a cube passed by, she jumped in and let the tube take her where it would.  The force of air knocked her off her feet and she slid along the glass surface.

The tube took her through several twists and turns along an orange pathway.  The cube in front of her went on ahead, but she was taken on a different track.  

Eventually she was deposited in a small room that had a hole in the bottom that led to an enclosed area.

It looked and probably was one of the cylinders that held the metal cubes until they were dropped into a test chamber.

Which chamber was it, though?  

She stepped through.  Likely, her weight would activate the mechanism to drop her into the room.  Was this what had happened in the first test with the turrets?  Had the other person ended up there and knocked out the cube system?  This one wasn't broken, so it wasn't that chamber.

After a moment, the bottom fell out and Chell was sent falling into the chamber.

When she landed, the voice spoke up again, "Okay.  The test is over.  You win.  Go back to the recovery annex.  For your cake.

It was a fun test and we're all impressed at how much you won.  The test is over.  Come back."

Chell wasn't going to go back, even if she knew how.  She was going to find her way out and leave this place.  Since she was in a test chamber, the woman in charge could see her every movement now.  She had to find her way back to the other areas, the ones without cameras.

Looking around, she discovered she was in test chamber 9.  The elevator that brought her here the first time was closed, so she'd have to do the test again to make any progress.

Chell walked through the Grid and stepped onto the button, opening the door.  There weren't any cubes this time, but unlike the time before, she had a fully operational portal gun.

She fired a portal through the open door, then stepped off of the button.  She proceeded to place a portal onto the wall to her right and walked through.

Chell came out on the other side of the door and looked to her right.  Where the elevator had been before, there was nothing.

With nowhere else to go, Chell walked towards it, making her way through the Grid.

Where the elevator was supposed to be was nothing but a round hole.  Chell looked down.  It seemed safe enough, though a bit far so she hopped through.  As she landed, the voice spoke again,

"Uh oh.  Somebody cut the cake.  I told them to wait for you, but they did it anyway.  There is still some left, though, if you hurry back."

Chell quickly got out of the way of where the elevator could come down and proceeded to look at the surrounding area.

There wasn't much to explore in the small area she was in, and there was a wire fence blocking the way to what looked to be a larger room with mechanical equipment.  Looking closer, Chell could see that one section had a concrete overhang.

This was the only area of concrete that she could find in the larger room.  Fortunately, the overhang was above a couple of stairs, so she could place a portal there and have enough room to get out of the portal safely.

Chell placed a portal right above the stairs, then turned back around to find a concrete spot on this side of the fence.  One wasn't immediately obvious, but when she approached the circular area where the elevator would rest, she discovered that that part of the floor was concrete.  She placed a portal on the ground and stepped through, landing on the metal stairs.

So far, so good.  There seemed to be something beyond the overhang, but there wasn't enough room to get around it.

However, a few feet in front of her were two pistons that were raising and lowering.  Making her way down the stairs, she waited until both were lowered, then cautiously stepped on the first piston.  Then, she stepped over to the second one.  It seemed to rise higher.  Maybe she'd get a good look of what was on the other side of the overhang.

Once the piston rose up, Chell looked across.  She couldn't see anything but the wall beyond and the flat top of the concrete overhang.

She quickly fired a portal and placed it on the top part of the overhang.  She could get up there and get a better view of the place.

When the pistons had lowered, Chell stepped off and walked back over to the stairs.  She looked up through the portal.  It seemed safe enough, so she walked up to the highest stair and jumped up, reaching her arms through the portal.  

Chell was able to grab onto the edge of where the portal was resting and from there pulled herself up to the topside of the overhang.

To the left, in between the overhang and the wall, was a large silver horizontal piston that went back and forth, pressing into the wall across from it.

The wall that the piston pressed into was holding up a section of floor.  On the wall above the floor, the person before her had drawn an arrow pointing to the left and a stick figure going through a door in red.

Trusting the person that had so far not steered her wrong, Chell carefully stepped onto the piston and waited for it to move to the other side.  The metal was smooth and curved, but Chell held her balance.

She walked across and stepped onto the floor, then followed the arrow's path.

Chell was met by a metal grill blocking her way.  However, on the other side of the grill was a concrete wall.  With nowhere else to go, Chell fired a portal onto the wall and made her way back to wait for the piston.

It didn't take long for the piston to come sliding her direction.  Once she heard the thud of impact, she quickly stepped on and rode it back to the concrete overhang.

Chell walked off and went over to the portal in the floor and looked through it.  It seemed safe enough, so she sat on the ground and dangled her legs through the portal.  Then, she pushed herself through.  It was a bit awkward, but she managed to land on her feet, which was what she had been trying for.

She found herself in a small room with a large ceiling.  The only way out was an overhang that was too tall for her to reach.

Chell thought for a moment, then placed a portal near the ceiling, across from the ledge, then jumped through the portal in front of her.

She landed on the metal ledge and found herself in a rusted metal hallway that turned to the left.

Chell walked down the orange-lit path, turning to the right when it did.  As she walked down the pathway, a familiar stench wafted through the air.

As she continued walking, making her way towards a more brightly-lit room, the female voice spoke again, "You're not even going the right way.  Where do you think you're going?  Because I don't think you're going where you think you're going.  Hello?"

There wasn't any other way for her to go, and besides, the owner of the voice had no idea where she actually was.  There hadn't been any cameras in these pathways.

Turning back to the matter at hand, Chell paused at a crossroads.  There was another orange hallway to the right, it had a metal staircase leading up to a catwalk.  In front of her was a room that had several large pistons that were rising and falling.

However, on the wall in between the two choices, there was, drawn in red, an arrow pointing to the room with the pistons and a stick figure walking through a door.

There was no reason to suspect that her mysterious helper would steer her wrong, so she chose the direction the arrow indicated.

Walking into the room, Chell watched the five pistons rise and fall quickly.  There was a piston in each corner and one in the middle.

Looking around, she noticed that the floor was made from some sort of grating with a few sections that had large holes.  Glancing down, Chell discovered that the area below her was filled with the deadly noxious liquid.

The holes were sizable, if she wasn't careful; she could fall all the way through, or at the very least, get stuck in them.  Neither option was good, so she'd just have to avoid them.

Chell walked over to the hole between the middle piston and the one in the back right corner.  She easily jumped over and continued on her way through the room.  

After a few steps, she found another gap, though this one was thinner and longer than the first.  She cautiously stepped over it and kept going.

She soon came across another larger gap in the floor, between the piston and the one in the front right corner and hopped over it.

Chell now found herself facing a tall wall.  In the past, there had been rungs to create a ladder that went all the way up.  However, many of the rungs were missing and most of the ones that were still there were close to the top.

That was the way out, but she'd have to get up there another way.

Chell turned around to watch the pistons to see if they could help her out.

The two pistons on the side of the room where she had come in went all the way to the top.  There were stress cracks on the ceiling from their impacts.  Those wouldn't be of any use.

The two pistons she was standing between didn't seem to be much better.  They didn't hit the ceiling, but they didn't go close enough to the entrance in the wall.

That left the middle piston.  It went a bit higher than the two pistons she was nearest, so Chell walked over and waited for the round platform to lower to the ground.

Once it was down, Chell quickly jumped aboard and rode it to the very top.

The piston paused for a moment at the apex of its rise and from there; Chell could see a concrete wall down the opening.  She fired a portal at it and rode the piston back down.

Upon reaching the bottom, Chell hopped off to the direction she had gotten on.  She fired a portal at the wall in front of her and stepped through.

She popped through the portal in the opening and saw that the hallway went to her right.  Chell walked towards the rusted metal hallway and saw that it ended after several steps.

The floor continued several stories below where she was standing.  Only one thing to do but jump down.

Chell leapt off the higher ground and landed below with a jolt.  The springs did their job and kept her from dying.

She then continued on her way down the dingy path.

When she entered a larger room, the voice addressed her again.  "Didn't we have some fun, though?  Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said 'Goodbye' and you were like," The voice grew deeper and slower, "'no way,'" and now it was back to normal, "and then I was all 'we pretended we were going to murder you'?  That was great.

Is anyone there?"

Chell looked perplexed for a moment; she hadn't said anything during her entire time here.  Obviously, whoever was in charge was just trying to bother her.  It wasn't going to work.

Her attention turned back to the room she was in.

On first glance, it looked almost to be a dead end.  To the left, there were pillars holding up the ceiling and there were pipes and vents on the wall.  To the right were two pistons that rose up and down, going all the way to the ceiling.  Beyond that was a wire fence that lead to a room with a catwalk, large wall fans, and a tube.  There didn't seem to be any way to remove or open the fence and there were no concrete walls for her to place portals on.

Looking back around, she saw that there was an opening in the ceiling that showed a much higher roof beyond.  Quite a few feet above the hole she was looking through was a concrete platform above a horizontal piston that would periodically slam into the wall.

Chell placed a portal on that concrete slab and looked back around for another one, this time on the level she was standing on.

Unfortunately, the only available place was the cracked ceiling where the two twin pistons bashed against.

If she placed a portal there, she could ride the piston up and through it, then come out and hopefully land on the horizontal one above.

Well, she'd just have to try it.

Chell walked over to the pistons and watched them, keeping an eye on the one above, watching to see if the movements matched.  The two twin pistons had different rhythms, so she'd have to pick one and hope she didn't get smashed.

After watching for several moments, she decided that the one on the left seemed to give her more time to land on the piston above.

So, she fired a portal at the ceiling above her chosen piston and walked over to stand directly in front of it.

Once it was on ground level, she quickly stepped aboard and watched the ceiling as she rose up towards it.

When she was pushed through the portal, Chell tucked herself into a somersault and rolled out onto the horizontal piston.

It was slightly disorienting as the piston sped back to the other side, but she was safe.  She then quickly hopped over to the concrete platform that was to her right.

Looking around, she tried to figure out where to go next.

Thankfully, the person before had left her another hint.  On the wall to her right was a red arrow pointing up and the stick figure going through the door.  Chell looked straight up and discovered another arrow higher up.  This one was pointing to the right and was indicating a metal platform.

Chell looked over the upper area of the room, how would she get to that platform?

Close to the ceiling, there were two rows of concrete sections.  It was right across from the platform.  Since she was standing on concrete herself, she could use that to fling all the way across to where she needed to go.

She placed a portal across from the platform and one on the ground next to her.  She then dove through the portal on the floor and came out face-first from the one above.

Flying back towards the ground, Chell fired a portal below where she would fall.  Safely passing through it, she was flung out to the indicated platform.

Chell flipped herself around to land feet-first and came to a slightly bumpy stop.

The platform was connected to a short hallway to the right.  Following it, she found that to the right of the wall was more hallway.

However, this hallway was blocked by four rapidly moving pistons.  They didn't reach all the way to the end, but there were pipes holding them into place.  Even if she wanted to risk walking past, she couldn't.

But, beyond the pistons was a concrete wall.  Problem easily solved.  Chell placed a portal onto the wall across, then turned back to fire one onto the wall near her.

She walked through the portal and ended up safely facing the pistons.

The voice spoke to her again, "You really shouldn't be here.  This isn't safe for you.  It's not too late for you to turn back.  I'm not angry.  Just go back to the testing area."

Even if Chell knew the way back, she wouldn't go.  She had gone too far and had nearly been killed by the person running the place.  She was going to get out of here, one way or another.

It looked like another dead end, but Chell saw a wide piston raising and lowering to the left, so she went to investigate.

The piston was nearly as wide and tall as the small hallway it was in, so there was no walking around it.  There seemed to be an identical piston behind it.

However, at certain intervals, both pistons were briefly lowered to reveal a room with a concrete wall across from her.

In the brief space of time she had, she could see that the person before her had scribbled something on the wall, so she was still going the right way.

Chell waited until both pistons lowered again and rapidly shot a portal onto the wall.  She then turned around and walked through the portal she had used earlier.

She now found herself in a large room.  Turning around, she saw that the person before had scribbled an arrow in black and the words 'Over Here.'  So, she needed to go up.

Chell looked up and found that the area was crossed by several sets of horizontal pistons that would start at the walls, crash together, then go back.  It was hard to see where she needed to go around them.

After watching the pistons for several minutes, she finally saw that around part of the top was a wire fence.  If she could get a good look up there, she might be able to use portals to get past it.

So where should she start?  

She watched the pistons for a bit longer, finally noticing that there was one that went right-to-left close to the top of the room.  It was the highest one she could safely use the portals to get to.

It took several minutes of watching the pistons to get the portal placed where she needed, she kept having to reposition herself to get around the other pistons that were constantly moving.

Chell then walked back to the portal on the lower level and looked through.  

She could see all the way across and to the upper area.  On the wall beyond the fence, she could see that the person before her had drawn a red arrow pointing to a square opening.

When the piston crossed in front of her, she quickly stepped onto it and fired a portal onto the concrete flooring.

Chell then back flipped through the portal and landed on her feet close to the indicated exit.

The arrow pointed to a crevasse in the floor.  Walking closer, Chell could smell the stench of a deadly floor nearby.  A cube transport tube rose out to the left of the crevasse.  Looking down, Chell could see that the tube continued lower and to the right.  The ceiling was high enough so that she could walk on it.

She walked over to the hole and jumped down to land on the tube.  She'd have to be careful and keep from falling into the fatal liquid below.

Chell followed the tube to its end against the wall.  The only way she could go was down.

Below her was another transport tube; however this one was surrounded by the disgusting, swirling liquid.

Taking a deep breath, she hopped down to the lower tube to see where it would take her.

Thankfully she landed safely and turned around to follow its path.

Before she started on her way, the voice addressed her, "I feel sorry for you, really, because you're not even in the right place.  You should have turned left before.  It's funny, actually, when you think about it.

Someday we'll remember this and laugh and laugh and laugh.  Oh boy.  Well.  You may as well come on back."

Chell had followed the only path she could; she wasn't going to start second-guessing herself based on what the voice said.

She turned back to the task at hand.  The tube continued on into another room.  The person before her had scrawled a red arrow pointing to that room, so she was still going the right way.  She trusted her unseen helper far more than the sinister voice who had tried to kill her.

Chell walked along the tube until her progress was stopped by a horizontal silver piston going back and forth slowly.  There seemed to be an exit just above the piston, so she'd have to find a way to get on it.

However, the only concrete in the room was the wall the piston ran into.  She'd have to place a portal right above the impact point and time going through another portal to land just right.

She fired a portal at her chosen spot and then turned back around to go back to the other room.  There was some concrete there, but in a rather inconvenient place.

Chell stood on the transport tube and turned to face the wall to her left.  She fired a portal and placed it on the wall slightly below where she was standing.  She'd have to make a risky jump out over the death trap and make sure she landed on the piston.

She was able to watch the piston through the portal from where she was standing.  Once it approached very near the portal, Chell made a bold leap out over the liquid and through the portal, making a rough landing on the piston below.

She rode the piston to its wall and quickly stepped off and onto the metal floor.

Chell followed the hallway to a small room that had a square hole surrounded by metal fencing in the floor.  On the wall across from her, there was a red arrow pointing down.

She looked down through the hole and saw a metal floor a distance below.  Chell grabbed the metal railing and jumped, flinging herself over the fence and down into the hole.

Once she landed on the ground, she looked to see where to go next.

The main pathway was a dimly-lit hallway ahead of her.  There was also what seemed to be some kind of air duct opening to her right.  Chell crouched down and peered in and found that it seemed to be a hideaway the person before her had hidden in.  In it were several jugs, cans, and computer towers.  The word 'Help' was written on the floor in red.  The room was small and didn't seem to lead anywhere, so she stood back up and looked back around.

Several feet down the main pathway, the floor stopped and gave way to 6 pistons firmly pressed against each other with three on each side.  The floor then continued on the other side.

Chell didn't want to walk across the pistons, all the others had moved quickly, but there was nowhere she could place a portal on the other side.

With a resigned sigh, she made her way down the hallway and carefully stepped onto the first piston.

Nothing happened.

Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad.

Chell made her way across and stepped onto the second piston, just about halfway across the section now, when suddenly, the pistons retracted and the ground fell from beneath her feet.

She landed in a small enclosed area below.  

There were several metal barrels standing about the area.  There also were weird-looking things on three of the four walls.

Before Chell could investigate closer, an alert siren buzzed once and shortly after, the door on the right wall opened to reveal one of the nasty robots with guns.  It saw her and uttered, "There you are."

Thinking quickly, she fired a portal behind it, then swiveled to fire one at the wall behind her and ran through it.

She appeared behind the robot.  Not sure what else to do, she used the portal gun to pick it up.  This prompted an "Uh-oh" from the robot.  Chell moved a few feet, sticking it out of the enclosed box and roughly put it down.  This caused it to topple over and shoot crazily, finally saying a last "No hard feelings."

No sooner had it done so when the alarm sounded again and the door to her left opened.

She couldn't see a clear view of the robot and by the time she had looked, the buzzer sounded once more and the door in front of her opened.  The robot in there saw her and said, "Deploying," and started to fire at her.

Chell quickly shot a portal at the wall behind the robot across from her and ran back to the portal behind her, avoiding the bullets that the robot had aimed at her.

When she stepped through, she immediately picked up the robot with the portal gun, causing it to ask, "Who are you?"

Chell ignored the question and roughly put it down, causing it to fall over and fire randomly.  When it was done, it said, "Shutting down."

She turned back around to look at the portal behind her and found that the small area now had a hanging claw dangling from the ceiling.  There also was a grimy black handprint to the left of the portal.

Was the way out somewhere above the claw?  Chell walked underneath it and looked up.  

She found a red arrow pointing to an open area to the right.  Looking closely, she finally saw a section of concrete ceiling.  Chell fired a portal up there and then turned to look at the portal next to her.

The area below was clear, so Chell jumped down.

When she landed, the voice spoke to her.  "You're not a good person.  You know that, right?  Good people don't end up here.  Can you hear me?"

Whether she was good or bad didn't matter.  All Chell wanted was to leave the crazy place.

She could hear a familiar, jaunty tune.  There must be one of those radios around here somewhere.  Chell turned to look and found a wire fence between her and three of the robots.  One of the robots was on the ground, one was looking right at her but wasn't doing anything, and the other had a blinking laser.

Chell gave a sigh of relief.  Apparently these were malfunctioning and wouldn't shoot her, thank goodness.  She'd had had enough of these blasted robots.

Looking into the room beyond them, up near the catwalk on the right was another red arrow and a stick figure pointing the way.

She didn't see a way onto the catwalk immediately, but there was a cube transport tube above her.

Chell backed up and fired a portal where the tube met the right wall.  Then, she turned around a placed a portal on the wall behind her and stepped through.

Up top, she started looking for a way to get to the catwalk.

There was a place on the catwalk near where she was standing where the railing simply didn't cover.

With a jump, she landed easily on the catwalk and continued her journey, heading towards the indicated spot close by.

It was another air duct-like opening, however, this one lead down.  Chell crouched and made her way through.

She fell through the opening and landed below.  On top of a robot.

This was a surprise, but she didn't move.  The robot said, "Hello friend," but couldn't shoot her.

A door opened in front of her, but her main concern was to get off from on top of the blasted robot at the moment.

She stepped off to the side and quickly picked it up; this caused it to protest with a "Hey!"

Chell then took a few steps and dropped it out of the hole.  It fell, and upon landing, started shooting wildly.  When it was done, it said a final, "Malfunctioning," and ceased moving.

This was the first time the other person's advice had put her in danger, but to be fair, there didn't seem to be any other way out.

Chell peered cautiously out from the area in the wall to see if there were any more robots lying in wait.

There didn't seem to be any others, but she did see that across the way was a black arrow and the words 'Over Here' written.  

She couldn't look up because the door had stopped at a slant, so Chell jumped off the enclosed area to take a look around.

She landed with a thud and immediately looked upwards to see where the other person was pointing to.

On the other side of the room and above there was a metal ramp that lead to an opening.  Chell looked back at where she had been and saw that the slanted door was made of concrete.  She could use it to fling herself upwards.

First, she placed a portal on the wall underneath where she had been.  Then, Chell backed up and fired a portal on the slanted wall.

Once it was in place, she ran through the portal on ground level.

Chell came out of the upper portal and started falling towards the ground.  She rapidly rolled over to face the ground, placing a portal on the floor at her estimated point of impact.  She sailed through the portal and flew out of the upper one.

She somersaulted through the air and landed on her feet, then proceeded to head down the pathway.

After turning the corner, she reached an open doorway that lead to an area similar to the office section she had seen previously.

As Chell stepped through the doorway, the voice spoke to her again.  "This is your fault.  It didn't have to be like this.  I'm not kidding now.  Turn back or I will kill you.  

I'm going to kill you and all the cake is gone.  

You don't even care.  Do you?

This is your last chance."

The voice had already tried to kill her once and had failed, so Chell wasn't too worried about the threats.  She'd find a way to get out.

Chell walked down the hallway and found a door on the right.  She opened it and found a small office.  There wasn't anything of interest, so she continued on her way.

She came across three chairs sitting on the right facing across the hallway.  On the other side of the hallway was a Grid covering a door.

Obviously something of interest was in there.

She passed through the Grid and opened the door.

Chell found herself in an odd room.  The side she had entered on was quite small, blocked by a plate of glass stretching from one side to the other.  Behind the glass wall was a section of room with some kind of small dome in the middle.  Behind this section of room was another glass wall with more room behind it and what seemed to be a door leading to the right.

Also on this side was a button on a stick to the left.  Lacking what to do next, Chell walked over and pressed the button.

The dome behind the glass rose to reveal that it was actually some sort of sphere on a robot arm.  It unfurled itself, then a blue laser appeared from it.

The other robots couldn't fire through glass, so Chell assumed that this thing couldn't either.

So, she didn't panic when it locked on to her with a beep and the green eye in the center flashed yellow.  The eye flickered red and something shot out of the robot.

Chell however, did jump when the thing impacted against the glass and it shattered, raining shards on her.

She bolted for the door, scrambling out of the room and cutting her feet on the broken bits on the ground.  The door had closed behind her, so she wrenched the handle up and dashed into the hallway.  The robot beeped, locking onto her.

Chell scrambled to the right and leaned against the wall, safely out of sight of the robot.

The rocket it shot blasted out of the room and hit the wall, oddly vanishing after it did so.  The door closed after this happened.

Well, that wasn't fun at all.  How was she going to get around it?

There was another glass wall behind it, she could get it to break it and then she could make a run for it.  That was risky, but it did seem to be quite slow.

Chell crept over to the door and cautiously opened it.

The robot was looking her way.

She started running and it locked onto her.  Chell swerved to the right and ran past the robot.

It fired at where it had locked on, missing her by a long shot.

She stood in front of the glass window, waiting for it to turn around and see her.

The robot rotated and finally saw her.  It locked on with a beep and Chell dashed out of the way.

The rocket hit the glass and shattered it in an impressive display.

Chell then ran through where the window had been and to the end of the room, cutting her feet again.  She ran through the door and made it to the hallway before the robot could lock onto her again.

She sat down in the hallway and picked out the tiny shards in her feet.  It was a delay, but she'd be able to run better if they weren't jabbing into her skin at every step.  Once she thought they were clear, Chell stood back up and continued on her way.

The pathway turned to the left and had a door blocking the way.  Chell turned the handle and the door opened.

She passed through to an orange-lit room beyond.

The door closed behind her and she looked around.

Her progress was impeded by another glass wall.  However, this one didn't have any robots behind it.

Chell thought for a moment, then came up with a plan.  She'd just have to mess with that robot again.

She opened the door and walked back to the robot's room.

Once back at the robot's area, she peered into the room and fired a portal against the back wall.

When it was in place, Chell walked out of the room and back to where the glass wall was.

She placed a portal in front of the glass wall and stood in front of it, waiting on the robot to notice her.

It didn't take long.

The robot locked onto her with a beep and Chell took several steps to the side.

It launched a rocket and obliterated the glass wall.

Chell then put both portals on the wall, so that the robot could no longer see her.  She carefully stepped over the rim and tried to avoid stepping on the glass shards.

There were several silver pillars stretching to the ceiling on the left and to the right, on the wall, the person before her had drawn arrows pointing to the left and the words 'Over Here.'

Chell looked at where it was pointing and saw an air duct with grimy handprints and an arrow pointing the way on the inside. 

However, the air duct was above her head and she couldn't jump up in it or reach it.

It was obviously the way to go, but she couldn't get there.

Looking around the room, Chell saw the transport tube sending cubes on their way overhead.

The robot could destroy glass and the tubes looked like they were made of glass.  If she could get a cube to fall out, she could climb on it and get to where she needed to go.

So, she headed back towards the robot's room, gingerly stepping around the glass shards on the floor.

When she got back to the room where the robot was, she leaned around and placed a portal on the wall close to the door.

Then, she headed back to the room with the transport tube.

First, Chell placed the portal in front of her and got the robot's attention.  As soon as it locked onto her, she repositioned the portal so that it was on the wall behind the transport tube.

When the robot fired, it hit the tube and shot the bottom out of the section.

Moments later, a cube fell out of the tube and hit the ground.  Success!

Chell used the portal gun to pick up the cube and placed it in front of the vent.  From there, she climbed onto the cube and into the air duct.  There were smudgy prints on the walls and floors.  The ones on the floor almost looked like boot prints.

At the end of the path, there was a rusty fan that blocked her path.  However, underneath the fan was another hallway with a concrete wall.

Chell placed a portal on the concrete wall, then backtracked out of the air duct.  She fired another portal onto the nearby wall and walked through.

As she entered the next room, she smelled an awful and familiar scent.

Chell followed the pathway until she reached where the metal floor stopped and the deadly liquid floor started.

On the left wall of the hallway with the noxious liquid was a metal thing spanning the wall that Chell could stand on.  She placed a portal onto the wall where it started, then turned and placed a portal on the wall next to her.

She walked through the portal and started making her way down the hallway.

When Chell reached the end of the path, she looked around.  Not too far away was a level concrete area.  She fired a portal onto one of the walls, then turned around and placed a portal behind her.  She walked through and arrived at the safer area.

To the right, there was a small room where the wall ended.  However, there was a scribbled black arrow pointing upwards.  Chell walked over to investigate and found a metal grill she could look through.  

She fired a portal through the grill and it appeared on the wall.  She then put a portal right in front of her and walked through.

Chell found herself in some sort of canal in what appeared to be a larger room.  There was some kind of liquid on the floor, it looked similar to the deadly liquid, but it was murkier.  Maybe it was diluted or there wasn't enough to kill you here, because she was feeling fine, aside from some stinging in the cuts on her feet.

She walked forward to get a better look at the area.  The liquid was sludgy, squelching every time she took a step.

Up to her left, she saw a door that looked identical to the ones that held the awful robots not so long ago.  So, likely, there was going to be a robot behind this one as well.  How many doors would this room have?  It seemed large, from what little she could see of it.

Readying herself, Chell placed a portal on the wall in front of her.  Then, she looked up and placed one on one of the walls above her and to the right.  She stepped through and onto the higher level.

As soon as she did so, an alarm sounded and doors all around the room's walls started opening, revealing the robots behind them.

Chell acted quickly and shot a portal behind the first robot she saw and ran back through the portal behind her.

She picked up the robot with the portal gun.  It protested with a "Hey!"  She dropped it off the side and watched it go ballistic and finally shut down with a, "Critical error."

Chell then looked around to find the next robot to take care of.  Looking across and to the left, there was another robot she could easily see.  She fired a portal behind it and walked back through the one in her little section.  She dispatched it in the same manner as the previous one, by dropping it down below.

There were eight robots in all, standing in alcoves in the walls.  Chell carefully made her way around the room, always going after the robots from behind and dropping them to the ground below, where they ceased working.

Two of the robots were on ground level, so for those, she brought them over to the canal and plopped them in.

Finally, the room was safe.  It stretched high above her, one of the largest rooms she had seen in the building so far.

Looking around, Chell discovered that two of the robot alcoves had slanted walls above them.  Some distance above the one that was situated lower, Chell thought she saw an opening in the wall.

It looked like that if she flung herself using the portals, she just might be able to get up there.  It was worth a shot, anyways.

First, she placed a portal on the lower of the two tilted walls.  Then, she put another one on the ground nearby and dove through it.

Chell popped out of the higher portal and was able to see the roof of the other slanted wall, so she put a portal on top of it.

She let herself fall back to the ground to start it over again.  She walked over to the portal on the ground and dove through again, this time popping out of the one on the higher slope.

As she fell to the ground, Chell put a portal onto the ground where she was heading and flew through it.

She blasted out of the portal on the higher slope again, and somersaulting through the air, landed on the alcove.

Chell walked straight ahead, it was the only way she could go.

As she made her way through the room, there was a siren and two robots were lowered down.

Thinking rapidly, Chell placed a portal under each robot and they fell through, flying out the other and randomly firing their guns.  They finally stopped moving with an "Owww," and a "Critical error."

Once they stopped shooting, Chell continued walking through the room.

The room ended in a dead end, but she looked up to where the robots had been lowered down.  There seemed to be a ledge up there she could get to.

Chell turned and ran back the way she had come, leaping off the ledge and falling to the ground.

She fired a portal below her and fell through it, blasting out the one she had left up top.

Chell landed neatly on the floor above the hole.

Looking around, she saw that up on the wall in front of her, there was a section of wall that had a rectangle hole in it.  Chell put a portal next to the hole, then placed one on the ground next to her and somersaulted through it.

She walked over to the hole and looked through.  It lead to a long bridge spanning the large room where she had faced the turrets.

Chell started across the bridge, there was a room at the other end.  Maybe it would finally be the exit.

The room on the other end of the bridge was very plain with a single door.

She tried the handle and the door easily opened.  It looked like it lead to another office area.

Chell walked through the door and down the hallway.  She came to a crossroads; however, the hall to the right had a door with a keypad, so she went to the right.

Down the hallway, she soon came upon an alcove with chairs and windows.  The view was odd; mostly it was looking over a large, mainly empty room.  The only feature she could see was another room inside the room that had a walkway that came from this direction.

Chell went back and continued making her way through the hallway, quickly reaching a set of stairs that led to another door.  She walked up them and tried the door.  It opened, so she made her way down the windowed path to some kind of room at the end.

At the end of the path was a room with a Grid over the entranceway.

In the middle of the room, hanging from the ceiling, was a large, odd contraption with video screens above it.  There were several spheres decorating it that looked quite like the rocket-shooting robot, except that they were different colors.

Curious and having exhausted all other possibilities, Chell entered the room.


	22. GLaDOS Battle and Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A novelization of the battle with GLaDOS and the epilogue in the video game Portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the rough draft of the twenty-second and final chapter of my Portal Novelization. This was written in April 2011, after I finished NaNoWriMo I took a break from working on it for a while.
> 
> I've been meaning to go back and edit things, but I haven't had a chance to, there's a few errors throughout the chapters.
> 
> Portal was written by: Valve, Chet Faliszek, Marc Laidlaw, and Erik Wolpaw. I'm just putting their game into words.
> 
> "Still Alive" is not transcribed here, but the song should go after the very last sentence. "Still Alive" was written by Jonathan Coulton and sung by Ellen McLain.

Chell walked towards the odd thing dangling from the center of the room, the voice addressed her, louder and clearer than before.

"Well, you found me.  Congratulations.  Was it worth it?  Because despite your violent behavior, the only thing you've managed to break so far is my heart.

Maybe you could settle for that and we'll just call it a day.  I guess we both know that isn't going to happen.

You chose this path.  Now I have a surprise for you.  Deploying surprise in Five. Four..."

A sphere from higher on the thing hanging from the ceiling suddenly plummeted to the ground with a clank.

The voice responded to this, "Time out for a second.  That wasn't supposed to happen.

Do you see that thing that fell out of me?  What is that?  It's not the surprise... I've never seen it before.

Never mind.  It's a mystery I'll solve later... By myself... Because you'll be dead."

It took Chell a moment to process all of this.  Did the voice she had been hearing all along belong to that thing in the middle?  It certainly seemed that way.  Was it the 'arguably alive' thing mentioned in the slideshow?

Well, it didn't matter if the voice belonged to a human or a robot.  This was the only way she had been able to go; everything had lead to this point.  There didn't seem to be any way to exit, so she'd just have to deal with this robot thing.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the voice speaking again, "I wouldn't bother with that thing.  My guess is that touching it will just make your life even worse somehow."

Chell started walking across the room again, heading towards the contraption and the thing it had dropped.  If she couldn't escape, she could at least cause some trouble for the one who had attempted to kill her.

As she grew closer to the object on the ground, the voice addressed her again, "I don't want to tell you your business, but if it were me, I'd leave that thing alone."

Chell ignored the voice and kept on walking. 

When she reached the sphere on the ground, Chell used the portal gun to pick it up.  It resembled the rocket-shooting robot, it looked quite like a metallic eyeball, it was light grey with a purple circle in the middle.  The sphere bobbled up and down as soon as she lifted it.  After a few moments, it grew still.

As she picked up the sphere, the voice spoke to her, "Where are you taking that thing?"

Chell raised the portal gun up and in doing so, the sphere as well.  Then, she released the button and made the sphere fall on the ground.

It seemed unharmed, so she picked it up again with the gun.

The voice addressed her again, "Do you think I am trying to trick you with reverse psychology?  I mean, seriously now."

Chell looked around the room, there were two different staircases, she could drop it off one of them.

The voice sounded annoyed now, "Okay, fine: DO touch it.  Pick it up and just...  Stuff it back into me."

Chell wasn't going to put it back, that much was for certain.  One of the staircases led to a platform that arced around the robot in the ceiling.  She could possibly reach the spot where the thing went, but there was no way she would even try.

As she glanced around the room, trying to decide what to do, she saw an incinerator at the back of the room.

She smirked and started walking towards it.  It was closed, but the control had to be around here somewhere.

When she got closer to the incinerator, the voice talked to her again, "Let's be honest: Neither one of us knows what that thing does.  Just put it in the corner, and I'll deal with it later."

As soon as Chell could find the incinerator control, she'd deal with it now.

The only other part of the room she hadn't explored was a staircase off to one of the sides of the room that lead to an enclosed part.  Might as well check it out.

She headed towards the stairs.

The voice sounded irritated now, her tone was sharp, "That thing is probably some kind of raw sewage container.  Go ahead and rub your face all over it."

That was unlikely, considering all.  Chell kept heading to the stairs.

The stairs were made of an odd clear material that had a black hexagon pattern.  As she reached the area the stairs lead to, the voice addressed her again, this time in a taunting tone.  "Maybe you should marry that thing since you love it so much.  Do you want to marry it?"

Her tone then suddenly grew harsh and louder, "WELL I WON'T LET YOU."  Her voice then went back to normal as suddenly as it had sharpened, "How does that feel?"

Chell thought the voice was growing more insane as time went on, the statements she was making were making less and less sense.

There were two horizontal rectangle windows that looked out from the enclosed area.  One looked out at the robot in the ceiling and the other looked towards the incinerator.

Near the window that looked at the incinerator was a button on a stick.  Since she was holding up the odd sphere, it was harder to maneuver.  She pressed the button to drop the sphere, and it landed with a clank.  Chell then pressed the button and the incinerator opened, revealing the fiery glow inside of it.  She picked the sphere back up and started towards the stairway.

The voice spoke to her again.  "Have I lied to you?  I mean in this room.  Trust me, leave that thing alone."

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard a hum and the sound of a buzzer.  The power line reaching from the button to the incinerator deactivated and turned blue.

Chell'd have to do this another way.  She kept on walking towards the incinerator.

The voice addressed her, "I am being serious now.  That crazy thing is not part of any test protocol."

She walked a few more steps, then dropped the sphere in front of the incinerator.

Chell then turned her attention to the ceiling above the incinerator and put a portal right above it.

Satisfied, she turned back around and headed for the stairs once again.

As she climbed the stairs, the voice commanded her to, "Just ignore that thing and stand still."

Chell ignored the voice and made her way to the incinerator control button.  She pressed the button and the incinerator opened.  Once it was fully open, she fired a portal below the sphere.

The sphere fell through the portals and into the flaming inside of the incinerator.

There was a few moments of silence, then suddenly, there was a thud and everything started shaking.

The voice glitched and then spoke in a sarcastic tone, "You are kidding me.  Did you just toss that Aperture Science Thing We Don't Know What It Does into an Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator?  That has got to be the dumbest thing that-whoah.  Whoah, whoah, whoah."  The voice grew slower and deeper as it spoke, then chuckled.

The voice returned to a normal speed, but it sounded different.  It was lower and sounded more human-like than previously.  "Good news:  I figured out what that thing you just incinerated did.

It was a morality core they installed after I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin.

So get comfortable while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters..."

That was not good, not at all.  Chell whirled around to bolt for the stairs and found that there was a noxious green cloud spewing out of the wall right in front of the doorway.

Chell took a deep breath and ran through the toxic mist, her eyes burning as she passed through it.  

As she did so, the voice spoke nonchalantly, "Huh.  That core may have had some ancillary responsibilities.  I can't shut off the turret defenses.  Oh well.  If you want my advice, you should just lie down in front of a rocket.  Trust me; it'll be a lot less painful than the neurotoxin.

All right, keep doing whatever it is you think you're doing."

Turret defenses?  Rocket?  Not only was neurotoxin pouring in from several areas around the room, there was a rocket-firing robot somewhere around here?

Chell hit the bottom of the stairs and kept running.  She had to take a breath and gasped for air, coughing as some of the neurotoxin entered her lungs.

The voice continued, "Killing you and giving you good advice aren't mutually exclusive.  The rocket really is the way to go."

Chell wasn't about to give in and let a robot kill her.  Wait...Even if the neurotoxin might kill her shortly, if there was a rocket-firing robot, at least she could cause some damage before she suffocated.

Her eyes were starting to water; she had to do this quickly.

She saw the turret robot across from where she had been and a blank wall stretching upwards behind it.  

Running past, she placed a portal at ground level and one at the level of the robot that owned the voice.

Chell stood in front of the lower portal, waiting for the rocket turret to see her.

The voice spoke again, "That thing you burned up isn't important to me.  It's the fluid catalytic cracking unit.  It made shoes for orphans.  Nice job breaking it. Hero."

The turret locked onto her and Chell leapt out of the way.  

The rocket was fired and sailed through the portals and blasted the owner of the voice. 

The robot shook back and forth and another sphere was knocked off.  This one was still attached by some kind of spiraling tube of green light.  It landed on a pair of large pipes not too far away.

Chell quickly fired a portal behind the sphere and looked through the one at ground level.  She used the gun to pick up the sphere and jumped off the pipes.

This sphere had an orange circle and looked more like an eye.  It chattered in a child-like manner at her as she ran towards the incinerator, "Who are you?  What is that?  Oh what's that?"

She dumped it on the ground and fired a portal above the incinerator, then headed for the stairs, coughing slightly.  The voice spoke to her, "This isn't brave.  It's murder.  What did I ever do to you?  The difference between us is that I can feel pain.  You don't even care.  Do you?"

By now, Chell was already up the stairs and almost to the button.

The voice continued, "Did you hear me?  I said you don't care.  Are you listening?"

She slapped her hand down on the button and activated the incinerator.  Then, she rapidly fired a portal under the chattering sphere, sending it to its fiery doom.

There was a thud and a distant-sounding scream, followed by the entire room shaking.

The voice cried out in pain, but then spoke defiantly, "You think you're doing some damage?"  Her tone then grew blank, "Two plus two is..." There was a long burst of static, then one quiet word was spoken, "ten..."  Her voice grew violent once more, "IN BASE FOUR!  I'M FINE"

Chell's lungs were starting to ache, but she couldn't stop now.  She dashed down the stairs, heading for the rocket turret.

The voice addressed her in a more normal tone, "I let you survive this long because I was curious about your behavior.  Well, you've managed to destroy that part of me.  Unfortunately, as much as I'd love to now, I can't get the neurotoxin into your head any faster."

Chell fired a portal at the wall close to the ground and another above it; she stopped in front of the lower portal and waited until the rocket locked in on her.  Once it did so, she jumped to the left.

The rocket blasted through and slammed into the robot, sending another core flying.  This one landing up somewhere above.

The voice said, "I'd just like to point out that you were given every opportunity to succeed.  There was even going to be a party for you.  A big party that all your friends were invited to.  I invited your best friend the companion cube.  Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him.  All your other friends couldn't come either because you don't have any other friends.  Because of how unlikable you are.  It says so right here in your personnel file: Unlikable.  Liked by no one.  A bitter, unlikable loner who's passing shall not be mourned.  'Shall not be mourned.'  That's exactly what it says.  Very formal.  Very official.

It also says you were adopted.  So that's funny, too."  

While the voice was talking, Chell looked up and once she found the sphere on a grating above the robot, she placed a portal onto the wall behind it even higher, then jumped through the one she was near.

She landed on the platform where the new sphere was and grabbed it with the portal gun and leapt off to the ground below.  

When she picked it up, the sphere started speaking in a monotone voice.  "One 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix.  One can prepared coconut pecan frosting."

It was mildly creepy, the sphere's 'eye' was blue and looked dilated and it kept going on, "Three slash four cup vegetable oil."

As she reached the incinerator, the female voice spoke again, "Speaking of curiosity: you're curious about what happens after you die, right?  Guess what: I know."

Chell dumped the strange sphere on the ground and fired a portal above the incinerator.  It stated, "Four large eggs.  One cup semi-sweet chocolate chips."

She started back towards the staircase, wiping her eyes on her sleeve as she went.  This needed to end soon.

As Chell reached the stairs, the voice continued, "You're going to find out first hand before I'd finish explaining it, though, so I won't bother.

Here's a hint:  you're gonna want to pack as much living as you can into the next couple of minutes."

Chell reached the incinerator button and pressed it, then quickly placed a portal under the creepy sphere.  It fell to the furnace below.

There was a scream and the room convulsed again.  Once it stopped moving, Chell bolted down the stairs.

The voice responded by saying, "Neurotoxin..."  She coughed twice and continued, "So deadly..."  She coughed a third time, "Choking..."  Then she laughed, "I'm kidding!

When I said 'deadly' neurotoxin, the 'deadly' was in massive sarcasm quotes.

I could take a bath in the stuff.  Put it on cereal.  Rub it right into my eyes.  Honestly, it's not deadly at all.  To me."

By now, Chell had placed two portals and was standing in front of the bottom one, waiting for the rocket to be launched.

The voice continued, "You on the other hand, are going to find its deadliness a lot less funny."

The turret locked on and Chell quickly got out of the way.  The rocket sailed through and slammed into the robot, causing another sphere to tumble off.

This one was floating in mid air.

The voice kept going on, "Who's gonna make the cake when I'm gone?  You?

Look, you're wasting your time.  And, believe me; you don't have a whole lot left to waste.

What's your point, anyway?  Survival?  Well then, the last thing you want to do is hurt me.

I have your brain scanned and permanently backed up in case something terrible happens to you, which it's just about to."

Chell placed a portal on the wall high above the sphere and ran through the one she was next to.

She fell through and snagged the sphere as she went down.

The voice continued, "Don't believe me?  Here, I'll put you on:"  The voice that spoke now was goofy sounding, "Hellooo!"  Then, the regular voice continued, "That's you!  That's how dumb you sound."

The sphere Chell had obtained had a red eye and was rolling about madly.  It was growling and snarling angrily and making all sorts of unpleasant noises.

As she made her way to the incinerator, the female voice kept talking, "You've been wrong about every single thing you've ever done, including this thing.

You're not smart.  You're not a scientist.  You're not a doctor.  You're not even a fulltime employee.  Where did your life go so wrong?"

Chell dropped the furious sphere in front of the incinerator, then placed a portal on the ceiling right above it.

She then dashed for the stairs, coughing and choking as she did so.

As she got closer to the stairs, the voice kept talking, "Are you trying to escape."  There was a high-pitched laugh, then it continued, "Things have changed since the last time you left the building.  What's going on out there will make you wish you were back in here."

Chell hit the top of the stairs and was making her way to the button and the voice kept going, "I have an infinite capacity for knowledge, and even I'm not sure what's going on outside."

Chell pressed the button and the voice continued speaking, "All I know is I'm the only thing standing between us and them.  Well, I was."

The incinerator opened and Chell fired a portal below the deranged sphere.

The sphere tumbled to its death and the room started shaking.  Unlike before, the room just continued to convulse.

The voice kept speaking, though in a garbled and high pitched tone, "Unless you have a plan for building some supercomputer parts in a big hurry, this place isn't going to be safe much longer.  Good job on that, by the way.  Sarcasm sphere self-test complete.

Stop squirming and die like an adult or I'm going to delete your backup.

STOP!  Okay, enough.  I deleted it.  No matter what happens now, you're dead.  You're still shuffling around a little, but believe me, you're dead."  This last part was given in a slower and deeper tone.

Suddenly, the room was much lighter and there was no sight of the robot.  It was just...gone.

Chell peered out of the rectangle windows, but she couldn't see what was going on.  

She found herself being pulled backwards.  She fought against it, but no matter how much she struggled, she was brought back and up.

Flying upwards, Chell could see rubble in the air swirling around the whole room.  She was powerless to do anything but just be taken away.

At least the knee-replacement springs would cushion her inevitable fall.

As she went upwards, Chell was finally surrounded by a blinding white light.

She was in the light for several minutes, and when it passed, Chell found herself outside lying on her belly and surrounded by debris.

Flaming pieces of metal sailed though the air and landed several feet away.

She was out.  She was safe.  She was finally away from the voice.

She was free.

Everything hurt, but that didn't matter.  She was outside and could leave at any time she pleased.  She could even see the gate to exit the grounds.

Chell breathed in the fresh air, though that caused her to cough.

Suddenly, she heard a robotic and dignified voice speak from behind her, "Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position."

She felt something metallic grab her legs and she was slowly drug backwards.  Chell tried to dig into the ground with her hands, but she was just clawing uselessly at the pavement.

No matter how much she struggled, she was still being drug backwards.

After a few moments, Chell started feeling dizzy and finally everything went dark.

-

Deep inside Aperture Laboratories, there is a room with shelves and shelves filled with round spheres.  The shelves surround a simple table with a delicious-looking black forest cake decorated with a single candle.

In the corner sits a Weighted Companion Cube.

Circular yellow and red lights light up on spheres around the room and a large claw comes down from the ceiling and pinches the candle, pitching the room into pure darkness.

-

Somewhere, a familiar computerized female voice started singing.


End file.
